Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Roger Douglas

Politics

Conference 2008: More coverage on Douglas and can Hide turn into a “fire-breathing dragon”?!

Just proving that Douglas brings headlines, I’ve found two other stories discussing his return to ACT. An NZPA report out on Sunday handily re-wrote ACT’s press release for it (as is typical with NZPA), while a more interesting opinion piece by libertarian Lindsay Perigo (whose views always makes ACT look mild) offered some typically blunt advice for the party: It’s fine for Rodney [Hide] to be fashionably gaunt and try to impersonate models, but it’s hard to resist the conclusion that his last-remaining convictions melted away with his adipose. In any event, fashion and fitness shouldn’t be his focus. He...

Politics

Probably not welcomed with open arms

One person ACT probably doesn’t want to see return to the party in a Roger Douglas-style rise from the ashes is Donna Awatere-Huata, disgraced in a fraud scandal which cost ACT valuable time, energy and money from 2002 to 2005. From December 2002, ACT became embroiled in a drawn-out process to remove Awatere-Huata from Parliament, after fraud allegations against her surfaced. Finding that Awatere-Huata had deceived it, the caucus expelled Awatere-Huata in early 2003 and initiated a process to expel her from parliament altogether. Not only did Awatere-Huata’s fraud (she was convicted in August 2005) represent a severe breach of...

Politics

Roger returns (part II): From Dancing to Douglas – circuit-breaker or poisoned chalice?

What are the implications of Sir Roger Douglas’s return to ACT? Today, I look at the pros and cons of him returning to the party he co-founded in 1993/4. While I’m sure many ACT supporters were pleased to hear that he’s coming back to the fold, the strategy is certainly not without risk. The main advantage of Douglas coming back is his galvanising effect with core ACT supporters. In my dissertation, I examined how Douglas possessed an extraordinary capability to unify supporters of the neo-liberal economic reforms he introduced, but did not complete, during the Fourth Labour Government of 1984-1990....

Politics

Roger returns (part I): how the story unfolded

He’s back. If you’re reading this blog you have probably already read that Sir Roger Douglas, co-founder of ACT New Zealand (with Derek Quigley), is returning to the party fold by giving a speech to the Annual Conference on March 15. In this post, I look at how the story unfolded, while in subsequent posts I will discuss the implications and the conference itself. First, I want to acknowledge the several messages I’ve received wondering where my analysis of the story is. I’m a little annoyed with myself, as I had already my suspicions that Douglas would turn out to...

Politics

Alan Greenspan and Roger Douglas

I’ve noted before that ACT has many international connections – perhaps more than any other New Zealand party. Much of this stems from the work of Roger Douglas as Minister of Finance during the 1980s, after which Douglas was recruited as an international consultant on economic reform. Moreover, ACT has often been keen to look abroad for policy proposals, such as when it became keen on the “Wisconsin Works” work-for-the-dole scheme during the late 1990s. More recently, in 2006 Rodney Hide and Heather Roy travelled to Germany and Ireland to look at how the German Free Democrats (FDP) and Irish...

Politics

The real home of ACT – and Derek Quigley

This week I’ve been in Australia and I can’t get over how much stuff in the papers there is on ACT. Much more than the Herald. The “Roger Douglas Fan Club” (as a journalist described ACT in 1996) must have definitely found a home across the Tasman, right? Well, although ACT likes to highlight its “global heritage”, I’m afraid this is not the case. For those who did not see through my feeble attempt at humour, I’m referring to the Australian Capital Territory. But on a more serious note, former ACT (New Zealand!) MP Derek Quigley moved to the Australian...

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