Just Left

Arrogance does nobody any good

... and that is why I am surprised at this important and blatant example:

Aspiring candidates for the job of New Zealand's top bureaucrat are being told by the National Party to think twice before applying.

Applications for the position of state services commissioner close on Monday and National's state services spokesman, Gerry Brownlee, is unhappy that his party will not be consulted as part of the appointment process.

A spokeswoman for State Services Minister David Parker told The Dominion Post that the National Party would be notified of the appointment, not consulted on it, before it was announced.

"They're not the government," Mr Parker said. "If we consulted the Nats, we should be consulting all the rest of the parties too. Where would it end?"

Do you imagine that a National Government in the same position would consult the opposition on the choice of leader of the State Sector?

Of course you don't, dear reader, because you are not stupid. The appointment of a State Services Commissioner by definition is a government responsibility, and because all parties believe in and uphold the political neutrality of the state sector, any party in government is going to appoint someone who is able to do the job for either party.

It is sheer arrogance of the most bare-faced sort to try and make partisan gain out of that, to imply that you know you're going to win the election, and that you should as an opposition party who the voters DID NOT TRUST with office, have some kind of dictat over what the elected government should do.

Extraordinary stuff, and a hint, another one of those rare but growing honest hints, of what National would be like were it to win the election later this year...

The very definition of confused

John Key, aspirant to the highest job in the land, seems to have trouble keeping a straight story.

You will of course be aware of the falling wages comment - that the man said he wants to see lower wages in New Zealand, an ambition which is always a surreptitious policy objective for National governments, but rarely blurted out in public.

He quickly realised this piece of honesty was a mistake, and so tried to imply he wanted wages to fall in Australia, not in New Zealand.

That didn't wash.

Then he claimed he actually didn't say anything about wages falling anywhere, that he was misquoted. He made that claim last Wednesday.

Last Thursday, he told Havoc on bFM that he did not 'overtly remember' saying anything about wages, or where he may have said it, but that his staff had jogged his memory.(!)

Later last Thursday, on Radio Live, he said there were several possible options for what could have happened:

Now there's only a couple of options, one, I didn't say it, two, the guy misreported me and when I said, ah, rise, he wrote drop, and third is, I mean, it is possible of course, you know, he was talking in the earlier thing.

He also conceded he could have said it as a joke.

Meanwhile, Northern Media is standing by its story as reported in its original context saying,

Northern Publishing stands by the story published in the Bay Report on December 20, 2007 in which National Leader John Key was quoted as saying "We would love to see wages drop."

Our reporter was at the meeting with the Kerikeri District Business Association President Carolyne Brooks-Quan and recorded the conversation.

We have a transcript of the meeting and we are happy that the quotes printed in the story are an accurate record of what Mr Key said.

All a bit murky to me, really. I wonder why Mr Key has handled this so badly. Maybe he's rather less good at this profession than he thought.

Truth matters

John Key's said that he was quoted out of context in respect of his words that he wanted to see wages drop.

Well, I would like to hear the transcript of the interview. Because the way the text of the news story is like this, remember:

Another point raised.... concerned the exodus to Australia by New Zealanders, lured by attractive wage compensation, and the recent call for employers to pay more.

Mr Key would like to see the opposite occur.

"We would love to see wages drop," he says.

Now. We have an unpopular comment that is consistent with the National Party's ideology, being made by the leader of the National Party.

Consistent? You got it. National's purpose in politics, as expressed in its constitution, is to oppose the Labour Party and the labour movement. To oppose the goals and objectives of democratic socialism as it is practiced in this country. One of the broad Labour movement's key objectives has always been to push for higher wages, and lower returns on capital. National has always opposed this, and sought lower wages and higher returns on capital.

It is important to note that this might not mean nominal wages falling under National governments. They might rise. Real wages might even rise. But they will always and everywhere rise less with a National government than they would with a Labour government in equivalent economic conditions, because National's purpose is to slant the gains away from workers and towards business owners.

Now, one of the key ways to do this is unemployment. The more people are on the dole, the less likely labour shortages are - and labour shortages drive up wages. That's why Labour governments on average, in equivalent economic conditions, encourage and achieve lower rates of unemployment. It is what we are here for: dignified work for all.

SO what John Key was saying is really pretty simple. He was just speaking from the hard-wired National party instinct: to redistribute the fruits of economic growth in any given situation from those who need it towards those who want it.

Of course he supports lower wages, or lower wage growth. That is what he and his party exist for.

Or.... because that's not a popular position, not one that is in line with Kiwi values, he has to have been "quoted out of context" in order to stick with a soothing, populist lie - that National supports higher wages for working Kiwis.

I know which one is more likely. And so do you.

The Glenn situation

I personally like the take that Pete Wilson from NZPA has.

What happened? A successful businessman has donated money to Labour, maybe to other parties, and definitely the UoA Business School.

That businessman also got an Honour, for the services he has given to business.

In terms of Labour, completely transparent and above board.

National, on the other hand, funnels its funding through blind trusts.

National often receives support from business interests.

National gives honours to business people.

Hmmmm.

People giving money to parties in New Zealand are, generally speaking, performing a community service. One could speculate about why the National Party would aim to punch in the head people who give money to Labour, publicly, when they are not honest enough to show who their own donors are.

Could it be perhaps something to do with National's ongoing desire to outspend Labour and do as much as they can to support a massive imbalance in political financial resources slanted in National's favour? It is certainly in keeping with their hysterical campaign against the electoral finance law of last year.

I wonder where that particular anti-democratic campaign will go next?

Press story on political blogging

There's a good Press story on political blogging today:

Bloggers Left and Right

This year's election could be the time when New Zealand's burgeoning political bloggers finally make their presence felt. Or will they end up just talking to themselves? PHILIP MATTHEWS reports.

The report makes for interesting reading. It kicks some mild sand in the direction of the right wing "bottom feeders" who inhabit our poor old political blogosphere, and interviews me, Russ Brown, David Farrar and a few others.

I think it's generally a fair spot. Have a look. The only thing I'd editorialise about is - yes, I do enjoy blogging. I STARTED blogging because of my concern at the left bein outgunned. If I didn't enjoy it, I would not still be doing it nearly four years later.

Key-Foot-In-Mouth

Remember the DVD Tour last year where John Key was presenting his "Ambitious for New Zealand" puff piece?

There's a nice little snippet below from the Bay News up in Whangarei, where Key says his ambition is to cut Kiwi wages, not increase them.

"We would love to see wages drop"
(Bay News, 20 Dec 07, p. 3)

Some ambition! Cut Kiwis' wages. At least that would be consistent with what National did when last in government. And that of course provides them with the excuse to cut public services and public spending - "oh, we had to, to, erm, boost the wages we organised to have cut for you!"

Dom Post hilarious on Wellington Central

There's a little story about the Wellington Central National Party selection in today's Dominion Post, which is by Tracey Watkins and is funny for two reasons.

First is the headline - "Big Nat names vie for top seat" - yeah, top Labour seat...

Second is this jewel of a paragraph:

The Wellington Central race is expected to be closely fought after sitting Labour MP Marian Hobbs decided to stand down at the next election and former Wellington mayor Mark Blumsky decided not to stand again for National.

Mark Blumsky was in many ways the ideal candidate. He lost in Wellington Central because Wellington Central is a Labour/Green seat. The Party Vote and Electorate Vote results for the last several elections show this to be absolutely true. In the last election, the electorate vote majority for Labour's candidate was 6180, putting the seat as the 31st most marginal in the country. The Labour/Green party vote was about 59%, one of the highest centre-left results in the country.

Wellington Central is not a plum seat for National. It is a plum seat for Labour. That is because of the kind of seat it is: lots of public servants, lots of creative types, lots of union organisers and officials, lots of NGO staffers and volunteers, lots of small intelligent businesses, lots of hospitality.

Of course, the Labour Party could lose the seat. It could have chosen a bung candidate, or it could run a useless campaign. Nothing can be taken for granted. But what I know is that Labour has chosen a bloody brilliant candidate who is going to be a heavy hitter in future Labour governments, and that the campaign team in Wellington Central, which I led last time, is even higher powered and better organised than it was in 2005.

In fact, the word I get from National insiders is that they know the seat is a reasonably safe Labour one these days, and that their only consideration in choosing a candidate is their party's rules that to get on the list, you have to contest a seat. Some in the National Party want to see Stephen Franks back in Parliament. God knows why, but if that is what they want, he needs a seat to get up on the list. His chances of winning the seat are, to be frank, nil.

I do scratch my head a bit at the Dom Post's editorial line in this issue. That paper has seemed to me to be anti-Labour in Wellington Central for years, constantly dissing the sitting MP and promoting National party candidates no matter what chance they have. Good on them, it's a free world, but the only people who miss out are their readers, who could perhaps hope that the usually quite capable political reporting in that paper would avoid having such a blind spot for the politics of the seat in which it is based.

Reforming Parliament

There's been some discussion (Poneke, NRT) about the reform of Parliament, following the departure of National's Liberal Woman.

At the moment, the House sits for seventeen hours a week, plus about 10.5hrs available for select committee meetings. The Government's programme of meetings is less important here, as it could fit around whatever Parliament decided to do.

The key innovation would be allowing Select Committees to meet during House sitting time, including Committee of the Whole time.

One could then imagine a house Calendar where on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the House sat 10-1 and 3-6. Question Time would be 3-4pm each sitting day.

Select Committees could meet on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9-12, or from 4 til 7. Or, they could meet at the same time as the House exactly. I believe Committees should be able to meet at any time other than during Question Time.

If urgency was required, it would lead maybe to a special 7-9pm slot, but this would no doubt be used rarely.

This would give MPs an end to the "sitting day" of 6pm (or 7, if a Committee chose a rare afternoon slot), but would also give one additional hour of debate each week. This would allow the legislative programme to move through more quickly, or to have fewer sitting days each year. It would protect Monday for Cabinet and allow non-Ministerial MPs to only be in Wellington three days a week, if that is what they wish.

As Helen Clark noted, the House is far more family friendly than it used to be. But it could go much further. In addition, somewhat tongue in cheek, Wellington's economy would no doubt benefit. MPs with no business in the evenings could spend more time at the library, or considering ambitious policies for the future, or in restaurants or bars, or at the movies, or playing social sports, or hell, just blobbing out in front of the TV with their partners...

... you know, doing the normal things normal people do, and not having to feel particularly guilty about doing so.

Where's the downside?

KiwiBlog officially the Herald's news source

Well it's nice to see Audrey Young being up front about it:

As for the loan, David Farrar points out the discrepancy between Labour's denials that it had received another loan from Glenn [he was being asked in the context of Glenn receiving a New year's honour] and the fact that the interest-free component of the loan it did receive is legally classed as a donation.

Now to give Audrey credit, she also wished NoRightTurn a happy fifth Birthday, in the same story. But I haven't seen Audrey or anyone else in the Herald actually run a line or a story derived from NRT's research. Which is a shame, because he's oodles more reasonable and better researched than KiwiBlog usually is.

On the issue, anyway, I don't see what Labour has to be ashamed about at all. Everything the party has done has been in compliance with the law. Advocating tighter funding and transparency laws for politics isn't inconsistent with anything to do with what Labour has done in this or any other situation.

More sprogs good for New Zild

I was pleased to see the news that the birth rate has increased, to a post-war high of 64,000 live births in 2007.

This is a secular increase across the developed world, occurring in countries which have introduced more family-friendly policies (like New Zealand with Labour), and in those which have not. As the Herald story notes, it would be tempting but wrong to attribute the increase just to good policy - family friendly policies are good whether or not they lead to a higher birthrate, of course.

What I think is happening is that the developed world has finally seen a run of good times. From the 1987 Wall St crash to the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis, instability in the world economy and here in New Zealand was rife. In addition, many countries were delving into neo-liberal extremism, which increased pressure on families and uncertainty about the future of people's employment, public services, housing and entire communities.

Since the 90s most countries have moved to a less extreme liberal position in their policy outlooks, thanks to solid centre-left periods of government in most developed countries. And the shocks to the world economy, while they have been happening (SARS, Iraq, etc etc) have been an order of magnitude smaller than in the earlier decade.

What would be interesting would be to see the impact on the birthrates across the OECD if there was a sustained move even further towards a more progressive, social democratic society and economy. Would the childbirth rates increase? Decline?

In any case, there is one good thing about the growing birthrate, especially if it is sustained: people like me will have to pay less tax than we otherwise would as our parents retire and go on the pension, because the burden will be shared among more working people. Amen to that, brothers and sisters!

Oldies getting more violent fastest

A delightful little snippet from Keith Ng:

John Key had kicked off the game with his claim that "violent youth crime is at an all-time high". It is. But violent old people crime is at an all-time high, too. Violent crime for every age group over 13 is, technically, "at an all-time high", and the fastest growing group of violent offenders is... wait for it... those in the 51-99 age group.

Average annual increase in violent crime apprehension rate since 1997:

14-16 year-olds: 2.6%
17-20 year-olds: 2.75%
21-30 year-olds: 1.33%
31-50 year-olds: 3.54%
51-99 year-olds: 3.59%

He further points out that the biggest jumps in recorded crime were associated with a new police database system in 2005, which was not correlated with a significant increase in other crime indicators (ACC claims or 111 calls are cited by Keith).

It does put into perspective the recent focus on youth crime. I happen to think that tagging is pretty annoying, and what I would like to see is paint-out policies where tagging is cleaned or painted over the next morning wherever it occurs. I also don't think it is unreasonable to boost the fine for offending, $200 seems a bit low.

I doubt, however, the spraycan thing will do anything. And I wonder at having more cops focused on this when there are more important crimes to be focusing on. (Someone else suggested that just making spraycans only carry water-based paint might help, too...)

The reason I would like paint it out policies (maybe funded by central government?) is that tagging just doesn't look nice. It is intimidating to many people to find tags in public places, and on their own property it can generate in people an incandescent rage, as shown by the brutal murder which occurred in Manurewa recently.

One also, of course, wants to look at the causes of tagging. There is something in the way our society is organised today which is deeply alienating to a large number of young people. This, definitively, is not the fault of those young people. It is the fault of the mainly old, mainly white people who run our country and our world in the interests, too often, of those who already have a commitment to society as it is, not as it could or maybe should be.

ON/CB Poll: Feb 2008

The latest One News / Colmar Brunton poll was published by TVNZ on Sunday night. The results are as follows, with the brackets showing the results from the December, October and September polls:

Lab - 34% (35, 37, 39)
Nat - 53% (54, 49, 49)
Grn - 6% (4.6, 6, 5)
NZF - 1.7% (2.2, 1.9, 3)
MP - 3.0% (1.7, 2.8, 3)
UF - 0.2% (0.5, 0.4, 1)
ACT - 0.9% (0.8, 0.6, 1)

The Preferred Prime Minister numbers are as follows:

Helen Clark - 27% (30, 33, 33)
John Key - 36% (35, 33, 31)
Winston Peters - 4% (2, 3, 4)

This is a different poll result than the others this year, and shows essentially no change over the summer.

They all show that Labour is the underdog for this campaign and has a lot of work to do between now and the election.

Armstrong on the money

John Armstrong's column in this weekend's Herald is well worth a read. Here is the bit I found most interesting:

[T]here is another problem with Labour's selling of its policies - its failure to slot policy announcements into a bigger picture.

The announcements in the Prime Minister's statement to Parliament on Tuesday were a case in point. One foreshadowed a huge increase in funding for voluntary organisations working at the coal-face of family and societal problems. But most voters would have missed how this dovetails with other moves focusing on at-risk youth, such as the tagging crackdown and the roll out of the "B4 School checks" screening programme identifying 5-year-olds with behavioural problems.

Clark was critical of John Key's choice of youth crime for his recent state-of-the-nation speech. But Key bundled his solutions together, thereby reinforcing the message that National is serious about getting young offenders back on the straight and narrow.

Clark is no less serious. But the scattergun nature of Labour's policy announcements makes it look like the party is doing things in a piecemeal fashion.

Across the whole of the Government, there is a danger that because Cabinet ministers know what Labour has done and know what it plans to do, they ignore the need to paint the bigger picture for voters.

Somehow Labour's dry announcements about funding have to be translated into something people find meaningful in their daily lives.

Quite agree. You can have as many media assistants, press secretaries and communications directors as you like, but those people don't do what is noted above as being needed.

The people who do that are the MPs (particularly Ministers) themselves. They know they need to do it better this year. What I am interested in seeing is, how they plan to go about it. The staff are just able to help, or if they are very good, steer ministers and MPs in the right direction. But the hard thinking in this area is political and strategic, and doing that better is vital to pull back the large poll deficit Labour faces at the moment.

It would be a terrible shame, in a whole lot of ways, if a Labour government which was running the country well lost an election because it couldn't explain what it was doing, or why.

Travelling home

So heading on the way back to New Zealand, leaving New Delhi tonight to Hong Kong, and then ten hours there before heading back to New Zealand. Makes it a long trip but it should be good to have a bit of time in HKG to look around.

India has been a very strange experience. We have been in the diplomatic enclave in New Delhi, and so the usual India experience - crowds, beggars, insane traffic, noise, pollution - have all been largely absent (other than the pollution, of course, though that is not as bad now as it was in Mumbai seven years ago). That makes you feel a little like you're missing the point of being here.

Which, of course, you are. I've not been here for India. I have been here for ICANN, for which this was just another meeting in just another town, with people just staying in the most expensive hotels for the shortest possible time, and flying out again as quick as they can...

Shock of the New

John Key is quoted in the National Party magazine Herald as saying:

Instead she gave us her version of sustainability and recycled a bunch of tired, old, previously announced policies ...

There are two problems with this statement, one trivial (for Key, anyway) and one substantive.

The trivial point is that it's simply not true. Read the speech and form your own judgement.

The second point is very important. Some people see politics as a game, and they're just in it to win. Values and policies don't matter; the game does. John Key is one of those people. That's why he wishes to create a political situation where policy, substance doesn't matter, where history is rubbed out and where you can make populist promises with no fear of anyone working out either that you're lying, or that you have no plan to put your rhetoric into action.

Other people consider politics to be a contest of ideas and policies and vision, and are in it to make the country better. That involves saying what you have done, why it matters, where you want to go next and why, and how you are going to get there.

That's what Helen Clark's speech did.

That is why she is a far better Prime Minister than John Key could ever hope to be.

A very good point, from a further point of view

This says better than I can one of my frustrations:

No, what always hits me, from Ponsonby to Mangere is a rough equity, across a range of course. New Zealand, especially when you consider its lack of natural resources al la Australia, and lack of population, has done rather well for itself in recent years. The populace is well fed, largely healthy, well educated, and has, with obvious exceptions, an economic stability it’s never seen before, at least in my lifetime. It’s as close to a real democracy with all the freedoms that requires as any society has ever been in history. It’s a happy, largely peaceful, clean country with an excellent infrastructure. The economy has boomed over the past decade and everyone who wants a job has one, and one which pays, despite the banging-on about trans Tasman inequity, as well if not better in real quality of life terms than virtually everywhere else on this planet. People take pleasure in whinging about all those things but seriously, get on a plane, look, get a life for god’s sake.

It’s a very different place to what it was ten years back.

Which brings me to the bizarre. Everybody, seemingly, wants to change all that. You rarely hear a good word about either Helen Clark or the Labour government, and the word seems to be its time to go.

And no-one really, if you ask, seems to know why.

That is rather a good point. What it shows actually is that communication, presentation and style are an alarmingly big part of what makes a government electable or otherwise.

On all the objective facts, things are pretty good. They need to get much better, of course: there is always a heap of work to do. But they have got better in the past few years, and part of that is because of the policies Labour has put in place.

So who is in charge matters. The policies matter. But the politics and the style and explaining what you're doing matters too.

 

Sad news re Rich

I was sad to hear of Katherine Rich's announcement that she is leaving Parliament at the election to focus on her family.

Not because she should not focus on her family - that is entirely her choice and a perfectly real illustration of how much politics needs to change in this country so that people with ordinary family circumstances don't feel pushed out of public life by the way it is organised.

Simply because, National needs more liberals. In an objective sense. In a sense that the country would be a better place if the sort of hyper-neo-liberal-conservative-trainwreck National Party that did so much damage to New Zealand in the 1990s was not able ever to take power again.

She was the standard bearer of that mainline National stream of thought, and now she is leaving. That is bad for National and bad for New Zealand. Key is not a liberal, he's a say-anything man. English is conservative. The rest, who would know?

Photo of the "chocolate"

At lunch today I took a pic of the item that David bit into by accident yesterday. I'll post it on this post later tonight when I find my cable to connect to the phone... you can judge for yourselves how chocolate-like it looks. And there they are.

BRT tax proposals worse by far than thought

When I wrote my post (see down a couple) about the unfairness of the business lobbies' proposed tax cuts, I knew they would be bad but didn't really have any numbers in mind.

NoRightTurn fortunately has done a bit of modelling. His conclusions show that following the lobbies' structure of tax cuts, 92% of the benefit would go to people earning over $60k a year. Only 8% would go to people those earning $38k to $60k, and none to those who tend to have the worst, hardest, least pleasant jobs to do.

Why anyone thinks a Labour government would give tax cuts to well off executives, consultants and businesspeople before it gave them to the people on struggle street is really entirely beyond me. We ditched that part of the Labour Party at the end of the 80s. It's called ACT these days, folks.

"wrap your laughing gear round this" "ouch!"

So DPF and I are both at the ICANN meeting, and ran into each other at the buffet lunch. David was eating a sort of dessert thing that was, I thought, in a dark brown pottery tray about 8cm by 4cm.

David didn't think it was pottery. He thought it was chocolate. The expression on his face when he bit into it was, as mastercard would say, "priceless."

We were chatting about it afterwards. I mentioned I'd blog it. David thought he'd be OK with that.

Business proposals on tax just don't add up

I see in this morning's Herald that the usual business lobby groups are calling for a tax cut that would give most to those on the highest incomes (a top rate reduction to 30%), and further wish to undermine Working for Families, which gave tax credits to low income earners.

Such a policy would be a massive redistribution of cash away from the hardest pressed families, towards  those who are doing best out of New Zealand's current economic success. As such it is totally immoral and wrong.

This regressive proposal is as usual fenced around with rhetoric about spurring economic growth, and helping improve New Zealand's savings and investment.

Unfortunately, it's just rhetoric. If there was substantive evidence in theory and in practice that a moderate lowering of income tax rates and thieving money off the poor could lead to much faster economic growth, then it would at least be a proposition worthy of debate. But there is no such evidence, for the story is not true.

Aside from the fiscal impact - a multi-billion dollar tax cut will always boost economic growth in the short run - NZ's taxes are already low by historical and international standards. And so a shift in the rates would be highly unlikely to have any significant effect on work effort or on savings and investment (which I might note is lower today as a share of the economy than it was in the 80s, with higher tax and interest rates).

I wish New Zealand's business lobby groups would work out some proposals for faster economic growth and development that didn't involve such regressive and obviously self-interested biases. It would be great to have a really robust and substantive debate about how we could boost productivity without  ideological bollocks being attached to the issue.

Waitangi Day 2008

I am finding some of the political commentary about last week's events at Waitangi little short of laughable.

New Zealand is a diverse country with many different communities. The great success of Helen Clark's management of the Waitangi Day celebrations over her period in government has been to broaden them: away from simply a bicultural festival commemorating the Treaty, towards a more genuine national day for all of us, maintaining at the heart of it the Treaty that was signed in 1840 and has been broken pretty much every day since.

Which is why the sycophantic attitude of some media in response to John Key's presence and statements at Waitangi on the day was so depressing. Key's party stands for winding back what few elements of Maori self-determination are in place, not least by abolishing representation in the Parliament for Maori constituencies, and taking a harder line on race than any other National Party leader of the modern era except his immediate predecessor.

Key's posturing was, first, dishonest. Second it was mendacious, because he is as ever holding himself out to the be the man who could solve something he firstly doesn't understand, and secondly has no solutions for. It is about as credible as him promising to lift NZ wages to the same level as AU ones with no policy to achieve it.

How that can be seen by commentators as a triumph is well beyond me. I'd far rather have a leader who was interested in the hard substantive work of building a united New Zealand than one who is keen to make narrow political mileage out of something he doesn't even comprehend.

New Blog: Stargazer

My friend Anjum Rahman has set up a blog: http://kiwistargazer.blogspot.com/

It will be well worth a read. Anjum has a perspective that is very different to that of the mainly male, white, young, right-wing blogosphere. You can expect thoughtful, intelligent stuff that will make you think.

AirNZ uselessness again

So the 11.55pm flight out to Hong Kong is now leaving at 2.30am.

I guess I should be glad that they're replacing the broken fuel pump, not leaving it there to bring us down.

The airline is usually pretty good but this stinks.

I'm off to India for a few days for an ICANN meeting.

Campaign finance and the NZ Herald: for or against?

Something I didn't get the chance to write about yesterday: the NZ Herald has editorialised its support for John McCain, practically endorsing him for the United States Presidency.

This is quite bizarre for a very simple reason. In its neo-con-worshipping list of praise for the Senator, they neglect to mention his sole significant political achievement - which is the one achievement of his that I think might make him worthy of support, if I was ever in any danger of voting Republican.

That is, the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law. Many of you have heard of it. It regulated the spending of political parties and candidates in US federal elections, restricting both donations and spending, regulated spending by third parties in general elections, and toughened requirements for third parties to be registered and conform with the law.

The Herald's endorsement is of McCain as a "man of integrity".

So where is the Herald's integrity in having two positions on campaign finance law reform?

They support it in the United States, and see the man who brought it in as a worthy President, integrity-laden and all.

At home, they regard the same sorts of regulation as an "Attack on Democracy".

Go figure.