Act: The Letter: 23 June 2014
Act: The Letter: 23 June 2014
No
he can’t but the left still will
David
Cunliffe cannot win from here. He cannot tell the country
that Judith Collins, Maurice Williamson and Michael
Woodhouse, should all resign and say that in a ministry he
led they would all be gone. He cannot say, "forgetting is no
excuse". And then have it revealed that he himself lobbied
on behalf of the very same businessman. His defences just
make it worse, “a staffer wrote the letter”, “I was
not lobbying I was only asking how the application was
going” – the Maurice Williamson defence. Forgetting
was an explanation that he has told Parliament repeatedly is
not acceptable in a government he seeks to lead. Cunliffe is
discredited but that does not mean the left will not win the
2014 election.
It is a knockout
If
failing to remember he had lobbied for the infamous Mr Liu
was the Leader of the Opposition’s only mistake he might
recover, but it is not. David Cunliffe has built his whole
case for a change of government on a narrative that National
is corrupt. He has produced no evidence except that some
Chinese businessmen have donated to National. In David
Cunliffe’s narrative, that is corrupt. It now appears
Labour itself has sought and received donations from Chinese
businessmen. After eight months, David Cunliffe has only
managed to score one knockout on himself.
He has
got it all wrong
Cunliffe must be the most inept
Labour leader ever, despite strong competition. First he
told the caucus that David Shearer could not win – oh what
they would give for Shearer’s polling. Then he said the
missing one million are all Labour voters so the party could
go left. No they are not, many are ACT voters. Then he
decided he could make the case that National was corrupt.
National may be a lot of things but the party is not
corrupt. National is the least corrupt governing party in
the world. Labour in contrast has been found by the
Auditor-General to have repeatedly misused taxpayer money to
fund its campaigns. Remember the "pledge card" debacle? A
leader with some ability to reflect would have thought,
“Before I throw this mud could it
boomerang?”
Will they?
If Labour
wants to salvage something from the wreck then they need to
replace Cunliffe now. The Australian Labor Party, the most
successful Labor Party in the world, would not hesitate. Any
party that claims to be able to govern should be able to
replace its leader. If David Cunliffe really is their best
MP, what does that say about Labour? David Cunliffe is so
bad half the caucus would be better. David Shearer or Phil
Goff or Annette King, if they want experience, Grant
Robertson who was the caucus choice in the primary, or David
Parker or Andrew Little if they want someone new. Labour
will still lose to John Key but not so badly. A real leader
is the person who is willing to take over as captain of the
Titanic after it has hit the iceberg. Has
Labour got a real leader? If we were in the caucus we would
go for Annette King.
Demoralising
The
Labour caucus morale is zero. They tried to tell David
Cunliffe that a dozen MPs had accepted donations from
Chinese businessmen. Labour MPs also know that there is more
to come. National is in no hurry to drop the next
bombshell.
If elections are about ideas, the sort of country we are, whether we are more free enterprise or more socialist, then the Left have already won the 2014 election. David Cunliffe was right when he said “Labour wrote this year’s election budget”, a budget that is the government’s manifesto for the next three years. We cannot think of a single policy in this year’s budget that could not have been in a Michael Cullen budget.
National
is the reason New Zealand is a socialist
state
Jamie Whyte made an observation about
Labour’s proposal to make the KiwiSaver scheme compulsory
that is truly profound. Labour can only make its proposal to
use the force of the state to oblige young people to
contribute to low return savings schemes, with an average
historical return of 3%, against repaying a mortgage, with
an average return of 6% because National has continued with
Labour’s KiwiSaver Scheme. Jamie points out that National
has continued with all of Labour’s poor quality spending.
We still have a Labour government, only the name and the
personnel changed.
What is National’s
excuse?
We expect Labour governments to propose
collectivist compulsory solutions, it is what they believe
in. What is National’s reason? National MPs say they need
to be centrist to win elections. Follow this logic and we
end up with Muldoonism again, a National government that is
even more Labour than Labour. National’s other line is if
you do not vote National you will get a Labour government.
Well that line has just lost its power to scare. Voters can
now start to ask the question National cannot answer, which
is, “What is the point of voting National if what you
get is Labour policies?”
Only way to make a
difference
Jamie Whyte is absolutely correct
when he observes the only way not to get Labour policies is
to elect a number of ACT MPs. Jamie Whyte’s blog on why he
opposes compulsory super is worth reading: http://www.act.org.nz/?q=posts/labour-engages-in-schoolyard-behaviour
ENDS