Dr. Geoffrey Miller

Strategic analyst

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Politics

National, Act, Brash and Orewa

This blog post was originally published at Liberation On 27 January 2004, Don Brash, then leader of the National Party for just a few months, gave a speech to the Orewa Rotary Club on what he called ‘the dangerous drift towards racial separatism’ in New Zealand. In his speech, Brash advocated the abolition of the Maori seats, an accelerated Treaty of Waitangi settlements process and the removal of ‘divisive race-based features from legislation’. The word Orewa is of course still strongly associated with Brash today. In his interview with John Campbell on Wednesday (27 April 2011), Brash was asked whether...

Politics

Don Brash’s move from National to Act

This blog post was originally published at Liberation Don Brash’s current bid for the leadership of the Act Party is viewed as a National Party takeover of the minor party – because Don Brash is an ex-leader of National.  However, in reality Brash has always been seen as more aligned with the ideologies of Act – after all, when he was a National MP he was dubbed ‘Act’s tenth MP’. So, is Don Brash naturally more of an Act Party politician than a National Party one? And if so, why didn’t he join Act in the first place, and not...

Politics

Don Brash – a new hope or an old headache for the Act Party?

This blog post was originally published at Liberation ‘Don Brash clearly believes he can do Mr Hide’s job.  Equally clearly, many of his colleagues do not – as yet.  If they were really confident Dr Brash was up to it, he would have been installed as leader by the end of this week, so wretched has been Mr Hide’s performance.  But Dr Brash is not of a mind to get the message.  For the party’s sake, he should have done one of two things. Either organised his putsch with absolute secrecy until the deed had been done. Or issued a...

Act Party campaign 2008

Politics

Conspiracy against Hide? Or Conspiracy by Hide?

This blog post was originally published at Liberation There are two conspiracy stories about the alleged November 2009 leadership challenge in the Act Party which is still dogging the party today. The dominant version about the so-called failed leadership coup is that deputy leader Heather Roy and maverick MP Roger Douglas conspired to topple Rodney Hide from the leadership position within Act. A second conspiracy theory that deserves some attention is the idea that the whole story is actually a beat-up, or at least an exaggeration, and that the story has actually been encouraged and exaggerated by Rodney Hide himself....

Politics

Act’s problem – Roger, not Roy

This blog post was originally published at Liberation The case against Heather Roy The Heather Roy conspiracy supposedly climaxed with her speech to Act’s annual conference in Wellington at the end of last month where supposedly the knives were still out for party leader Rodney Hide. The political commentator at the New Zealand Herald, John Armstrong, told readers that Roy had hidden ‘numerous, if subtle, digs at Hide personally’ throughout her speech. To Armstrong, Roy’s statement that ‘Holding an electorate seat and a couple of percentage points of party vote is not good enough’ is evidently not a blindingly obvious...

Politics

The guts to do what’s right?

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] ACT party stalwart Trevor Loudon, who runs the New Zeal blog, reports on the fate of the “anti-gang patches” bill. Amidst a busy news week I had initially overlooked the Herald’s coverage of the fate of the bill, which saw it passed 62-59. For ACT, Rodney Hide, John Boscawen and David Garrett both voted in favour of the bill, while Heather Roy and Roger Douglas voted against it. In March, Hide had made the bill a conscience vote after divisions amongst the caucus had become apparent. On hearing that Rodney Hide had reversed his original opposition to the...

Politics

Update: ACT and the Dunedin stadium

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] An update on opposition to the proposed new waterfront stadium in Dunedin, focusing on the connections with ACT. The prospects for action by Local Government Minister and ACT leader Rodney Hide seem to be diminishing. Earlier this week, Hide said he would be pleased to come to Dunedin at the invitation of Stop the Stadium, but also warned that it would take gross recklessness by local councils, which have thus far approved the proposal, for the project to be reviewed, according to the Otago Daily Times. On Saturday, the ODT reported a Hide spokesman as saying that a...

Politics

ACT and the Dunedin stadium

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] Former ACT MP Gerry Eckhoff delivers a speech at the Dunedin Town Hall, 29 March 2009. (Photo by the author). Local body politics constitutes something of a paradox. In election years, interest is low and apathy high, with voting turnout under 50% (compared with still a 70%+ rate in national elections). Coverage of councils’ activities in the national media is accordingly minimal, unless there is some particular interest point such as an entertaining mayor along the lines of Tim Shadbolt or Michael Laws. Even in most local newspapers (with some exceptions), coverage of local body politics takes a...

Politics

Conference 2009: the broad church?

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] If you work in a large organisation, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with the “general reminder” e-mail or memo sent out to all staff. “Could all staff please remember that in future….?” or “Just a friendly note that….” and so on. In my experience, these messages are usually directed at just one or two colleagues, but are sent out in a cloaked fashion to all employees in order to avoid broaching the specific issue with the person in question. Like the not-so-subtle reminders to employees, ACT’s decision to adopt a conscience-vote model for all bills is a general...

Politics

Conference 2009: Deborah Coddington

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] It’s safe to say that Deborah Coddington hasn’t been ACT’s greatest cheerleader in recent years. Even when she was an MP, she wasn’t one to mince words, calling Richard Prebble’s stunt-like suggestion in 2004 that ACT merge with National in the wake of Don Brash’s Orewa speech “disastrous”. In 2007, Coddington criticised Hide for being “rapt in his own dancing, flash suits, swimming and catwalk modelling”, instead of promoting policies such as “radical personal tax cuts”. If the criticism from Coddington has in the past been blunt, it is now razor-sharp. In her Sunday newspaper column published during...

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