Dr. Geoffrey Miller

Strategic analyst

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Politics

ACT List 2008: not today?

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] I couldn’t find any trace of an announcement of the ACT List in any of the usual places, so unless a release is scheduled for tonight I assume it has been delayed. Perhaps it is possible that ACT’s Board was only deciding the List order, with the announcement of it only to come later. My information that the List would be unveiled on August 16 was in the July 4 issue of member e-mail newsletter ACTion. Towards the Party List #7 The Board will decide the order of the Party List on Saturday 16 August, based mainly on...

Politics

Very clever

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] Very clever indeed. Heather Roy has a relaunched website with a new news blog called “Royters”. Which person in the office had that stroke of genius I wonder? The name alone is reason enough to visit! Incidentally I’m told from sources within National that Roy has little chance of beating former ACT MP Stephen Franks in the Wellington Central electorate. Roy is truly a credit to ACT and an asset to Parliament though, so I hope ACT polls enough to get her in alongside Hide.

Politics

ACT List 2008: what would be a “dream team”?

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] There are just hours to go until the ACT List is scheduled to be revealed – today, August 16. I’m not aware of any delays to the announcement and so hope to put some commentary later today on the release. In the meantime, here is some healthy speculation and wild guessing to get your teeth into. Back in February, we were told that Sir Roger Douglas would be just one of a “dream team” of candidates that ACT would announce during the course of the year. Yet there have been few, if any, truly stellar candidates unveiled. That’s...

Politics

Special report: the ACT List 2008 (part 2)

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] What follows is a breakdown into categories of ACT members who have put themselves forward for selection for ACT’s List at the 2008 election. I have collated this list using the biographies provided and occasionally using personal background knowledge. Obviously I have gone by the information provided by the nominees and could only place them in categories for which information was provided. For Alan (Smilie) Wood I had no information other than that he “[l]ives near Kerikeri”. Nominees will usually have been placed into at least two categories, one reflecting their geographical location and another their occupation, as...

Politics

Special report: the ACT List 2008 (part 1)

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] ACT members have been receiving voting forms and brief biographies of members who have put themselves forward to be on the party list for this year’s election. The accompanying information sets out the purpose of the vote, which is non-binding: On 16 August 2008, the Board of Trustees of the ACT Party will decide our Party List for the coming General Election. In the build-up, the Board members are gathering information about the contending candidates from many sources to assist them with that responsibility, including: – Speeches by the candidates – Summaries of qualifications and experience – Interviews...

Politics

MMP officially under threat

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] The New Zealand Herald has today devoted its editorial to agreeing with National on holding a referendum on MMP. As I’ve previously criticised, ACT is supporting a referendum on the basis that voters should have a chance to put forward their opinion. And National has committed to holding a binding referendum no later than 2011 on the MMP system. Yet as the Herald editorial shows, there is so much misinformation on MMP that no “fair” referendum could ever take place. I shook my head at the following in the editorial: Those who backed MMP no longer wanted unbridled...

Politics

One swallow does not make a summer, but…

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] As ACT strategist Brian Nicolle emphasised to me in written remarks last year, National has not won an outright majority since 1951 – the year of the waterfront workers’ strike. One could argue that a landslide election victory is well overdue and deteriorating economic conditions (don’t forget, New Zealand, not the United States, is the country halfway to a technical recession) offer fertile ground for a National 50%+ result. But if the rule, rather than the exception, prevails, we should expect National’s support to erode over the next few months as voters seek to “keep Key honest”. Presuming...

Politics

A ‘Critic’-al view of ACT – part 2

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] The main event in Critic this week was an interview with Rodney Hide, on page 39. Despite John Ansell saying this week that with the exception of Hide, ACT’s electorate candidates had “bugger all chance of winning”, Hide still expresses confidence in the ability of Sir Roger Douglas to win the seat of Hunua: Well, the key thing is the party vote but you have to say, the um … [laughs] I’m sure more people know and respect Roger Douglas than have ever heard of [National candidate in Hunua] Paul Hutchison. If Ansell is to be believed (and...

Politics

A ‘Critic’-al view of ACT – part 1

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] I must have felt nostalgic for my alma mater tonight when I entered the URL of Critic, the student magazine of the Otago University Students’ Association (OUSA), into my browser’s address bar. Fortunately, as a free on campus weekly, Critic sees no need to fumble about with clunky “E-Paper” technology and posts each week’s edition as a freely downloadable PDF, including this week’s paper. This week, Critic featured (on page 22) an interview with Warren Jones, the organiser of the Dunedin chapter of ACT on Campus. Jones’s name featured in the acknowledgements of my dissertation, as he was...

Politics

Why did Ansell leave?

[text-blocks id=”act-party”] A little less of my day job at the moment leaves a little more time for Douglas to Dancing. And there are plenty of things to comment on. Easily the most significant is the departure this week of John Ansell, essentially a marketing expert who was brought in earlier this year with the aim of sprucing up ACT’s appeal and packaging the party’s policies in more voter-friendly ways. As many will recall, Ansell was responsible for the ideas behind much of National’s advertising (and notably the half/half Labour-National comparison billboards) during the 2005 campaign. Let’s begin with Ansell’s...

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