Posts Tagged ‘election’

1. Never mind policy, what’s on the tape?

   Published on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
   

   It is hard not to feel that that the 2011 General Election has descended into farce.  We’re now ten days out from the Election, and for nigh on three days our politicians aided and abetted by the national media have given us a diet of irrelevancy about a tape of a private conversation.

   The PM raised a matter of principle about being secretly recorded in conversation over a cup of tea with the aspiring MP for Epsom, but before long our media are excusing the blatancy of this illegality and claiming the PM has something to hide if he’s not prepared to reveal what’s on the tape.  In climbing into this matter,  two of the other main parties, while tut-tutting at the secret recording, have been lavishly proffering public relations advice about what the PM should do because it “doesn’t look good” to have a private conversation and keep it that way.

   It is a sign that politicians are now more interested in doing what “looks good” than explaining the social and economic measures that will advance our wellbeing over the next years.  Is this because they judge us to be totally facile?  Are they right, and is this what we want?  Is it also a sign of the media is more interested in feeding us a diet of gossip and innuendo because they understand  people are so disinterested in policy unless it is to directly affect them?

   Surely it’s time to drop this nonsense of the tape and get back to debating the issues that matter so that we can have some substance on which to cast our votes.  This goes for the lot of them.

2. A Time for Self Reflection

   Published on Friday, September 23rd, 2011
   With Parliament set to rise in a couple of weeks ahead of November’s general election we are about to head into the valedictory speech season. The last ‘hurrah’ for those MPs that have decided not to stand for re-election.  This time around there will be 14 of them starting on 27th September with Green MP Sue Kedgley and finishing on October 5th with Simon Power.

   I strongly encourage you to catch as many of these speeches as you can. All will be streaming live on the Parliament website or on Sky TV.

   They will offer personal insights from our national leaders that we rarely see, regrettably due to the nature of the political game.

   Based on a very quick estimate there is more than 200 years of collective parliamentary service departing over the next few weeks. In anyone’s book that represents a phenomenal amount of parliament experience and insight into the machineries of government.

   There is no standard format for a valedictory speech other than conformance with the House standing orders. MPs are therefore free to dwell on their successes or otherwise and their musings on public life. Many with experience in the government benches reminisce about legislative triumphs, others who have spent their whole parliamentary career in the opposition benches will reflect on how they have tried to make New Zealand a better place. Some like to leave with a bang while others prefer to slip out quietly.

   The topics and tone, the highlights and lowlights will be fascinating to observe over the coming weeks.

3. Who Would Want To Be In Politics!

   Published on Monday, March 23rd, 2009
   John Key has my admiration for the way he is publicly handling the issue of ‘retaining jobs’ for New Zealanders.

   Within weeks of leading from the front at the ‘jobs summit’ where he looked great urged employers to do all within their power to retain their workforce, he is now placed in the embarrassing position of defending the decision of TVNZ to make some 90 people redundant so that it can meet its required dividend payment to the Government.

   Getting his head around the key messages to talk about both situations publicly while not appearing hypocritical is no mean feat.

   My perception is that he is pulling it off, in part because he still comes across in public as being honest, earnest and facing up to the issues.

   When Parliament first reconvened, John started to develop a reputation among media for being a bit of a word and meaning ‘mangler’. He is no dominant, razor sharp Helen; or silken, motor-mouthed Michael.

   However, what John lacks in the way of a persuasive tongue is compensated for by his honesty, believability and his freshness.

   Conversely, Phil Goff struggles to make any cut through in the believability stakes because we have been seeing and hearing from him for 20 plus years. Try as he might, his theme that Labour ‘lost contact’ with ordinary New Zealanders and it is now on a journey of ‘reconnecting’ just does not make it in the credibility stakes.

   In the months ahead John’s challenge is to retain his believability as the nation becomes more exposed to him. It is a far easier challenge than the one facing Phil, which is to prevent himself becoming a stop gap leader before a new leader emerges 12 to 18 months ahead of the next election.

4. How to look like a winner when you have lost big time

   Published on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
   Most people are possibly a bit tired of post-election analysis and there are many more news cycles to come before we begin to look ahead to how National is actually shaping up as a new Government. 

   But despite the extensive discussion it seems that one major point has been lost on most people, and certainly none of our political commentators seem to have mentioned it. Or perhaps it is so obvious that there is no need to state it.

   Has Ms Clark not pulled the most clever segue of her career by announcing her decision to step down from Labour Party leadership on the night of her defeat? This move it seems has completely obscured the fact that Labour got trounced in the election while National, who were led by a smiling assassin (if we believe the negative campaign), had a huge win.  It seems there is very little criticism of the campaign run by Labour and the fact that we could all see the negative campaigning to be a wrong move.

   The majority of post-election comments regarding Ms Clark have been about her legacy, her leadership and the gracious, clever and magnanimous decision she has made.  Her posting to Foreign Affairs further keeps her in the spotlight and provides plenty of opportunity to show the in-roads Labour has made in foreign affairs and diplomatic relations. Could our own Ms Clark perhaps be the next head of the UN? 

   While personally not a supporter of Ms Clark I have always been a huge admirer of her communication skills.  Once again she has managed to set the public agenda herself and get her key messages across no matter what the question or the issue. 

   Yes, Labour has lost and National has had a huge win.  But watch the press in coming weeks and we are sure to see lots more glowing reports on the “legacy” that is Ms Clark. 

   One wonders if this is a good or a bad thing for the National Party.  Certainly it seems that their win is not being held up as such a major achievement after all.  There is a feeling of expectations to be met and no need to make such a big deal of it.

   On the other hand we have a brand new leader of the Labour Party who is likely to get as much, if not more, air time as possible in coming weeks than our Prime Minister in waiting.  We certainly do live in interesting times.

5. Interpreting the political polls in the final week

   Published on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
   We tend to suffer from poll fever in this part of the election cycle with individual news organisations falling over themselves to bring us breaking news of the latest snapshot to reveal what voters are thinking.  All stand by the accuracy of their own poll and tend to regard it as the oracle, neatly ignoring polls published by their competitors.  This is not very helpful to the interested observer who is trying to figure out what all this means.

   Political polls present a number of problems for those trying to interpret them.  They all use slightly different methodology, there is a necessary delay between the questionnaire going out into the field and the results being announced, and they are just a snapshot in time.

   Political scientists prefer to talk about trends over time rather than the significance of a single poll result – which introduces the concept of a ‘poll of polls’.  This is where individual poll results are averaged out and tracked over time and is probably the most useful way to attempt to discern meaning from political polls.

   Curiablog is currently doing a sterling job demystifying the polls.  It’s running an up to date public poll average which weights the poll results according to factors such as sample size and the date it was taken. 

   This is a good example of the blogging fraternity filling a hole left by the competitive sensitivities of the mainstream media and doing all of us a favour by making sense of the numbers.

6. No lipstick please..

   Published on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
   The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is challenging the Presidential candidates to commit to maintaining the highest standards of ethical practice in their campaign communications by inviting them to make a formal pledge to abide by the PRSA Code of Ethics.

    

   “The use of innuendo, incomplete information, surrogate messaging and character attacks, whether in political discourse or other forms of commercial free speech, raises serious concerns for our organization and its 32,000 members, each of whom signs a pledge to the PRSA Code of Ethics. In fact, ethical practice is the most important obligation of PRSA membership, and we maintain that our obligations extend not only to those we represent, but also to the publics they serve. We view the code as a model for other professions, organizations and professionals, including political campaigns.”

    

   The PRSA is also inviting its own members to show their support for ethical campaign communications by signing up to a PRSA Facebook group – Clean & Fair Campaign 2008 .  The association says that by joining this group its members are telling the political campaigns (and the media) …  

   • I want accurate, truthful and transparent information that will allow informed decision making.
   • I want healthy and fair competition and an ethical climate fostering a robust political environment.
   • I want confidential and private information protected.
   • I want all those involved in the campaigns to avoid real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest.
   • I want the campaigns to strengthen trust in the United States of America and its electoral process.

   An opportunity, perhaps, for PRINZ to lead the way in a similar fashion on communication ethics during our election campaign?