The Standard has an interesting post suggesting that Aaron Bhatnagar is considering contesting Epsom at the next election for the Nats. Bhatnagar used to be an Act board member but fell out when Hide took the party from being a serious policy party to a one that looked more like a circus.
Bhatnagar has a high profile, would be a serious candidate and his selection would be a clear sign that the Nats have had enough of Hide’s hypocrisy and ongoing (mainly private) sniping.
Gone with Rotten Hide!
Hopefully they do run him. If Hide loses his electorate we may not have ACT in parliament next term which can only be good.
Hide and Bhatnagar are mates, Hide was MC at Bhatnagar’s wedding for one and I understand they are still friends. Personally I think Bhatnagar is probably more likely to be waiting for Tamaki.
Sometimes when friends fall out it gets very intense. Remember Lange Douglas or Shipley English.
… or Trevor & Tau
It would be an interesting turn of events if National made a real effort for Epsom. It would suggest that sharing the Treasury benches with ACT wasn’t worth the aggravation. I can see the argument for it, but those ACT’s votes in the House are valuable to National.
Still I think it is worth keeping an eye on.
@ Phil Never that close.
@Sean. Agree for 5 seats but not worth the considerable aggro for one or two.
nice story trev but sam cash at the standard makes up stuff all the time, not credible story
Oh dear Trevor.
Look I often find your take on things pithy and amusing if not entirely accurate.
I like reading what Labour MPs are thinking; their take on the things that matter to them. I’m interested in the horseflesh.
But this piece is way off. It pays to know a wee bit before blogging.
Actually Aaron left ACT because of the internal politics around deciding not to make a fulsome Hide run at Epsom in 2002 despite this being the obvious strategy – first MP for Epsom then leader in succession to Preb.
You make an interesting observation when you say that when friends fall out there can be high passion and hard punchiness between them. That’s why it’s a bad idea for such individuals to use the electoral system to prosecute their personal differences – the country looses – the voters don’t deserve it or like it. It’s a bad space to be in and will lead to unhappiness.
Luckily knowing both guys there just isn’t the bad feelings between them that you assert.
Regarding Aaron’s recent decision, I’d be more worried if I were Len Brown than if I were Rodney Hide.
Rob Carr says:
January 18, 2010 at 9:49 am
Hopefully they do run him. If Hide loses his electorate we may not have ACT in parliament next term which can only be good
———–
Which is why it’ll never happen. National didn’t think risking losing one seat from Dunne was worth getting rid of him, they’re not going to risk losing 5 seats from ACT.
Balance deleted You need to watch language Trevor.
National didn’t think risking losing one seat from Dunne was worth getting rid of him
Without Dunne, Oh-Bel would be as Blue as Helensville or Clutha-Southland.
It wouldn’t have made any difference to the parliamentary composition.
Why would the Nats want to take Epsom if it mean ACT departing from parliament altogether?
Assuming that they’d have enough party votes to have to go to the list the number of Nat seats is goverened entirely by the party vote, so their representation in parliament compared to their main opponents doesn’t suffer at all by losing Epsom to Rodney.
If the Nats take Epsom and ACT bows out altogether then there are likely to be fewer centre-right MPs,and although John Key might see ACT as a pain at times I’m sure he’d want as many right of centre MPs as possible, especially when the senior/junior split is so clear.
In my view the best thing would be to get rid of the two votes nonesense we have at present. We could get the same proportionality in parliament if we just aggregate the votes for all constituancies and use that as the party vote. If a party isn’t standing in a particular constituancy someone who supported it could tick a party box.
That way we’d stop a small selected group of people who live in atypical seats (Epsom, Wigram, Belmont, for example) (or who take the Maori option) from having two effective votes whilst the rest of us only have one, whilst retaining the principle of broad proportionality and keeping local representatives.
The problem with that George, is that the person who received the most votes in an electorate, wouldn’t necessarily be in Parliament.
In fact, it would be possible for a Labour candidate to ‘win’ an electorate, a National candidate to come second, a green candidate to come third and an ACT candidate to come fourth, and only the ACT candidate be elected.
I think we could tweak the current system to make it better, but don’t think your suggestion is the way to do it.
@Phil,
Yes, long term Ohariu will be Blue once Dunne is gone, but had National stood a good candidate (no offence Katrina) they would have split the vote more and Chauvel would have won in 08.
Oh, and even if National had have won Ohariu, that WOULD have affected Parliament.
UF would have had one less seat, but that seat wouldn’t have gone to National, it would have gone to whoever was next in the St Lague formula – from memory that would have been Labour.
@ peteremcc (1:28) – I envisioned that the consituancy seats would go to whoever won on a FPP basis, so in your example the Labour candidate would still be returned. The only change I suggest is that the party vote is created by aggregating the electorate votes rather than having a separate tick.
(1:32) – I think you’re right and agree that in some situations the result might be plus or minus one compared to today. But in my view this is better than allowing a manipulation of the system, which is clearly what happened in both Epsom and Wigram. We seem to be allowing a few voters to have their cake and eat it.
Whilst the net result of this doesn’t appear to favour one particular party perhaps now is the time to tackle it. One day, it may make a difference.
National have to supply a candidate of merit and contest the seat properly. If they don’t they’ll be seen as giving ACT a free pass and while that might be overlooked in other elections – in the next election and with Hide’s history, that’s going to look ‘off’. They’d be handing Labour a huge stick to beat them with.
Not sure why Ohariu has suddenly been labelled a safe blue seat. I live there and it is anything but…
Tigger, Ohariu is the richest seat in the country – more so than Epsom even.
Perhaps it’s all the bureaucrats that live there though?
George, the best way to address this would just be to drop the threshold requirement altogether.
If 2% of the country support a party, why shouldn’t that party get 2% of the seats?
peteremcc – I’ve got no issue with this, but there are those who like a FPP element as they see it as providing a direct personal link between the electorate and individual MPs. If we retain this we have to put up with the likes of Jim A and Peter D having a seat when their share of the vote wouldn’t necessarily provide this.
And an arguement used against removing the threshold altogether is that it helps to protect against extremists getting a toehold in parliament. Never really agreed with this myself – if 1% of people vote communist or nazi then in a democracy they should still be represented regardless of how abhorent mainstream voters regard their views.
I see Bhatnagar has a “denial” on his blog which neatly doesn’t rule out knocking out Hide and ACT at the next election. Could be handbags at dawn on the right!
I’ve just read the denial. Reads like the old Roger Douglas ones.
“The government has no current plans to sell Telecom.” Meant it was going to Cabinet the next day.
No denial whatsoever there.
On thread or off blog Trevor
Nonsense, Aaron left ACT when the Board (ie. you know who) told him he had to stand in Epsom in Hide’s seat. Aaron thought it was a stupid idea and bailed. His bailing was actually pro-Hide. he then left to the National Party.
I don’t know Aaron well enough to tell you for certain what he is doing next but imagine he has his hands full with his family business and the succession plan with that, young kiddies and in the short to medium term running John Banks’ Supercity campaign and possibly a position in Banks’ office when he wins.
Don’t count your chickens Cactus…
Sure with the Banks millions, the Bhatnagers millions and the behind the scenes Business billions… we can look forward to saturation advertising for Banksie, but that might end up having the opposite effect.
Anne
We look forward to the election with great interest. Len Brown of course can whinge all he likes about not having money, business backing and everything else….truth is his funders ran a mile when they actually fronted up and met him.
@ Cactus
Well of course most of the Business billions aren’t going to go Len Brown’s way. He wouldn’t want them if there are strings attached. Such as… promised access to the city’s assets so that the very rich boys and girls can line their already bulging pockets with even more dosh.
Btw, what’s with the royal ‘we’?
Hi Anne
Howdy Spud.
Don’t know if Aaron is the man the Nats will stand, but as someone who has stood in the electorate before, it is worth noting that the voters in Epsom are not stupid – Labour got 10k party votes in 2005.! That election Hide won rather easily but picked up about 2% party vote in the electorate. It is the richest electorate in the country and tops the tables on many socio-economic factors. The Nats were never serious in standing Worth in 2008 (or even 2005), but if they do get serious and put up a worthwhile, high profile candidate, thereby signalling to their constituency that they want the seat back, then they will win it back easily. When door knocking in 2005 so many people told me that they never saw Richard Worth, so he wasn’t particularly highly thought of as a local MP. Trevor is right – for 5 or more, they will stand by ACT, but for one or two – they will cut Hide – and ACT loose.
There is a way around this. And here’s how it goes.
LPG (Labour Greens Progressive) want Rodney gone. There’s no two ways about it. So I have got a suggestion for the Epsom LEC (and henceforth GEC and PEC). Don’t stand candidates in the next election for Epsom. Instead, give your party vote to either L or P or G, and give your candidate vote to the Nat candidate. To be fair, the Labour candidate would never win Epsom, the National person could. With the LPG votes going to the National guy (or girl), plus National’s own votes, Rodney will be gone.
On thread or off blog Trevor
I like it when Labour MPs put together little snippets of fact and then write their own story in between. Aaron had his own reasons for leaving ACT, Cactus and Chris are in a far better position than you are Trev.
Balance deleted for stupidity Trevor
Stuart, another factor in the Epsom decision may well be the need for the Nats to distance themselves from the super city, with the true horror of Hide’s crazy plan revealed by late 2011. And not just Epsom, the C&R ‘nats in drag’ on the Auckland Council and possibly in the Mayoral chair will need a scapegoat too, as the super city unravels beneath them. Bye bye Rortney.
Who cares, let them fight each other over the spoils- that part of Auckland is so overrated as a place to live and gets way too much attention.
Let’s worry about the other 90% of Auckland who are about to come under the mercy of a giant bureaucracy who play their own brand of politics, appointed CCO Boards and a government who want to control Local Government from the Beehive.
How about encouraging the general populace to say ‘rack off’ to those Narciscistic Remeura Waste of Spaces who want to tell us how to live.
and a government who want to control Local Government from the Beehive
You say that like it’s a bad thing. If Local Govt’s across the country were only as incompetent as Central, then you might have a point.
How revisionist of you Trev!