Further analysis of Williams on Agenda

The scandal over Williams lies re the Labour Party Congress have been the main focus of the last 24 hours. But there are plenty of other statements which are worth looking at. From the transcript:

GUYON  Your own poll Mike Williams UMR, I saw it this week, 51-36, 15 points behind, how do you pull that back?

MIKE  Well again I think UMR is the subject of this problem that – let me tell you virtually all polls are conducted by landlines I don’t know one that isn’t.  Now I was the first person in New Zealand ever to put the electronic white pages together with the electoral roll.  Okay that was in 1986 I think, and I got an 82% match in the general seats.  Right, what we got in January of this year was a 50% match.  What this means Guyon is that half the population is statistically invisible.  Now what I trust is our canvassing data and our canvassing data shows the Labour vote about where it was last time, about 40%.  Now at that point it’s winnable.

I find it amusing that Williams works so hard to discredit polls, when his party spends so much money on them! And I have never known someone to claim canvassing data on behalf of a party is more representative than a random scientific poll.

Now look I am the last person to deny there are some challenges for the polling industry, but people over state the problem of landlines. Labour’s Coromandel candidate Hugh Kininmonth for example claimed yesterday:

I’ve never been a fan of the polls. They’re incredibly irrelevant and unrepresentative. For one they seldom report the number of respondents who are ‘undecided’. Around 37% of electors don’t have a landline – they are therefore exempt from participating in the polls.

The 2006 census found only 8% of households said they had no landline, with only 2% having no telecommunication services at all.  I have no idea where 37% comes from.

Williams stuff on matching the electoral roll to the white pages is also somewhat of a red herring. That affects the party’s abilities to match voters to phone numbers, but does not affect polling for media organisations as they do not use the electoral roll, but just call random numbers from the ranges Telecom have advised are available for allocation.

GUYON  Alright, some people say that Andrew Little is lining himself up for the job of Labour Party President.

MIKE  I’d welcome that in the fullness of time yes I would.

GUYON  Is that going to happen?

MIKE  I wouldn’t be surprised, I think he’d have good support

Now Andrew would be a very capable Labour Party President, and on present form he may get a promotion sooner than he wants!

I note on that issue the Herald states:

Mr Little said he would be able to keep his role with the EPMU if he gained the Labour Party presidency.

Now imagine if Little ascends to the presidency before the election. He would be running the Labour Party campaign, and at the same time also running the independent third party EPMU campaign, which will in no way of course be aligned to help Labour’s campaign. That will be a serious case of hat shuffling.

MIKE  There was general agreement I mean it passed with a majority in the parliament and I do think it needs to shake down.  What I’d say to you Fran is that this is what it’s about, it’s about the influence of big money in election campaigns and I think in New Zealand we do not want the kind of American politics transplanted here.  I mean this book (The Hollow Men) really shows an outrage, it’s a conspiracy to overspend and that’s what the Electoral Finance Act’s all about.

Mike’s idea of general agreement is a fascinating one. He means Labour, NZ First and the Greens.

But the prize for hypocrisy is for the line “it’s a conspiracy to overspend”. Mike Williams’ own party overspent by $400,000 to $800,000. They lied to the Chief Electoral Officer about it. They stated they woudl include the pledge card as an expense at a time when they knew that was impossible to do and stay within the limit. They lied merely to keep the issue out of the media until after the election. So for Williams to go on about conspiracies to overspend is just laughable.

MIKE  Well that’s like we had in the past I mean if you’ve got a long memory you’ll realise Muldoon called an election under a National passed law that said you couldn’t enrol after the writs were down, in other words enrolments in that election that Muldoon actually lost cut off in 48 hours and we had to run round, parties change laws, that’s the prerogative of government is it not?

Williams is citing Muldoon as constitutional precedent! God help us.

MIKE  The sort of feedback we get is that yes people are definitely and something has to be done about that, and I think that will be at least partly addressed in the budget, but I do think there’s an understanding that the government cannot legislate for food prices, cannot legislate for petrol prices, there are some things that governments cannot do.

Well if you are going to cite Muldoon as a precedent for constitutional law, why not also follow him as a model for the economy and do a price freeze like he did.  After all his economic management was on a par with his constitutional law probity.

BERNARD  And we don’t have a government list if you like of what are other strategic assets, so we have to wait and hope or guess at what the government’s view on this is, this is the danger of politically driven decisions on foreign investment isn’t it?

MIKE  I’d agree with you, I think we probably do need a list and I think that’s an oversight, but Helen said you know we’re not perfect and these things don’t arise very often, I mean we haven’t had major strategic assets that I’m aware of the people trying to take them over before.

Here I agree with Mr Williams. We do need a list of what assets the Government now deems strategic. Even the Labour Party President says we need a list. So hopefully someone will ask Dr Cullen when he will be producing one.

MIKE  Well I think this government has been very constrained in its use of government advertising I mean if you go to New South Wales in advance of an election you’ll see wall to wall government advertising you know we’ve got advertised for nurses doctors and that sort of thing, I can’t anticipate that but obviously you’ve gotta tell people about what’s going on.

Cough, splutter. Constrained? Well constrained when the Auditor-General knocks some of the more outraegous plans back, but $100 million of government advertising spend is not constrained.