Wednesday, August 20, 2008



A question of trust

Poor John Key. After all his talk of ambition and optimism and tax cuts for other people, at the end of the day, people still don't trust him:

ONE News asked voters in the poll whether National is being open about its plans.

Fifty per cent say "no", while 37% think they are. And a quarter of National's own supporters say they are not being honest.

(Sadly, they didn't ask the latter group whether they approved)

Hopefully National has learned the lesson of the 90's: that if you lie to the people and contrive a "crisis" to justify a radical right-wing agenda which was never mentioned in your election campaign, you will be a one-term government (or at least you will now that we have a fair electoral system). But given the dominance of their shadow-cabinet by 90's rejects such as Bill English, Lockwood Smith, Tony Ryall and Murray McCully, its quite possible that they haven't. Which makes it essential to ensure that if National holds power after the next election, they lack a legislative majority or are saddled with a coalition partner who can and will pull the plug at the first signs of a radical policy agenda. That sort of safeguard is one of the reasons we imposed MMP on the politicians in the first place. Which is precisely why National wants to get rid of it...