As signalled in a previous post, I’m having a bit of a re-think about Red Alert. In particular, how to build on its strengths and address some of the issues that have arisen in the last couple of years.
In the last term of parliament, Red Alert was a bit of an experiment in how NZ Labour politicians could communicate directly with the public and have some honest conversations about policy, issues of the day and expound our thoughts in general.
It was a bit ad hoc, which was largely a strength as the blog is pretty widely acknowledged as being real and honest. The voices on Red Alert are MPs. They aren’t paid staff. That should continue.
However, there’s always room for improvement and here’s a few preliminary thoughts from me. I welcome your constructive input.
I’ve been given a new portfolio called Open Government, perhaps a first for any major political party as a formal portfolio. I’ve been doing a bit of research and will write a piece in the next couple of weeks about the portfolio, its importance and what it can achieve. It’s unusual to have an opposition portfolio which doesn’t match up to a Government Ministry. It should be noted that the National Government is most unlikely to actively promote open government, despite Bill English doing some good work in pushing for more open data in the public sector. Red Alert will be a vehicle for demonstrating how a Labour Government would promote Open Government.
Red Alert is no longer an experiment. It’s now part of the fabric of political discourse in this country. It may have also changed things a bit. I’d like to see Red Alert and Labour’s strong presence generally in social media become more focussed. As I see it our purpose is two-fold.
First, to continue to engage in direct conversation with New Zealanders about our thoughts and ideas. Second, for the medium to be a tool to build campaigns.
I’d like to see us concentrate more on the second. It will require more effort to work collaboratively across the political spectrum with those we can work with. It requires building more skills. And tolerance of differences.
However, there are some challenges. The biggest, as I see it, is those who would deliberately use underhand and hostile tactics to undermine attempts to demonstrate open-ness and a different way of engaging with New Zealanders. Red Alert’s tolerance will not extend to them.
Honest debate and disagreement is one thing. It’s an important part of democracy. Personal attacks, abuse and pack behaviours designed to destroy new voices and new ideas and a different way of engaging are another.
Red Alert is a vehicle for Labour’s caucus to communicate directly with New Zealanders. We know and welcome the scrutiny and sometimes criticism from the mainstream media. We also welcome the engagement with bloggers and commentators in the new media environment provided by the internet.
I believe that there should be consistency with new media in the rules and protocols applied to mainstream media. Red Alert is just one of those new mediums. We are not journalists. Nor should we ever presume to be. But we have responsibilities in how we communicate. And we can show an example.
The voices on Red Alert are of elected politicians. People who believe that the only way to make change happen is to make it happen. I believe that that if politicians are seen to do things differently, then New Zealanders can begin to have more faith in us.
It’s worth considering that around a third of eligible New Zealanders didn’t vote in the last election. For any party. That’s something we should all be grappling with.
A few comments:
1. Red Alert works really well when it is a two way discussion of ideas. Some MPs do not quite get blogs and see them as a way to recycle press releases. This is defiantly not the proper use of a blog.
2. At times the site gets run down by the trolls who are clearly only interested in attack politics rather than the development of ideas. You can tell many of them by how loud they complain when their comments go into moderation.
3. Something needs to be done about the privacy policy for the site. Unless a comment breaks the law there should be absolute protection of, for instance, a person’s IP address.
I think it’s important to find the right balance. As you say, deliberate hostility is detrimental, however censorship is also detrimental, arguably even more so.
I’ve had carefully constructed, open, honest posts which don’t attack any individuals mysteriously disappear into the abyss that is your moderation queue (and to be honest half expect this one to too). Now I’m not accusing you of deliberate censorship, but whatever is going on is hindering the conversation. If a dissenting view doesn’t appear for several hours then it’s never going to be an open and fair debate on the merits of the topic.
Find the right balance between moderation and censorship and you’ll be a step or two closer to a truly “open” forum.
Hi Clare,
Perhaps the most difficult problem facing Open Government is distilling the good ideas from a huge amount of noise. In 1990, when the New Labour party formed I was primarily interested in the fact that they were open to new ideas. What resulted was a wish list detached from reality and a huge amount of noise.
The Open Data movement is also critical because data, or perhaps more usefully evidence, is necessary to differentiate good policy from bad.
Everyone should be able to argue for their ideas – but at the end of the day such ideas should be examined in the harsh light of objective evidence. It is true that values must play a role in policy, but we need to build policy on a foundation of reason and evidence rather than ideology.
In terms of openness and opinions, you should consider not editing, moderating or deleting any comments, ever. Why is it necessary to delete comments you disagree with? Unless there is offensive, ie. vulgar or crude language, why not let readers judge the merit of any given comment? Those who disagree can say so, as can those who agree with any statement.
It’s good to hear your opinions here, even though I disagree with many of them. It would be good to hear from more MPs, and perhaps (the case I can think of is Iain Lees-Galloway) you should encourage MPs with their own blogs to integrate with Red Alert, or repost their (relevant) posts here. Glad to hear Red Alert will continue to be a fixture of the NZ political blogscape.
Perhaps the most uplifting expression of the values I believe in – in humanism and reason – can be seen here – a speech by Charlie Chaplin – the Great Dictator Speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLci5DoZqHU
@Joel, so far I have supported the moderation policy here. AFAIK, the moderation has not been about disagreement but about controlling trolling, bad language or personal and family stuff. Quite frankly, I’m not wanting to read infantilia, trolling or ‘shock jock’ crudity. It destroys threads, promotes flame wars and degrades the debate.
A thought- could Brendan Burns continue to use his journalistic skills to good use on Red Alert, either as a poster or even as a moderator/organiser?
I think the ‘trolling’ applies both ways on Red Alert – you’ve got commenters raising genuine issues sometimes, only to be shouted down or just labelled as right wing plants by certain posters. There’s no chance for debate at all, and it seriously limits how useful Red Alert can be if you have a small group of cheerleaders who are more interested in just slandering anyone who disagrees with them.
All I am saying is that selective tolerance is no tolerance at all. Sometimes I see anti-National comments stick around while similarly harsh anti-Labour ones disappear. Have an objective standard – that’s all that’s needed.
Mickysavage, why the obsession with IP address privacy? If someone has abused the author behind the screen of anonymity they’ve every right to attempt to find out who that person really is and their motive for the comments and to respond.
I’d like to see less oxygen given to ipredict. The less attention paid to it, the more irrelevant it becomes.
A link to RA from the labour.org.nz website would be good and would draw more people in to comment.
A bit more thought around the content of some of the blog posts – perhaps have a post ‘peer reviewed’ by other MPs before getting posted on here. Some of the posts by certain MP’s have an unfortunate tendency to criticise, attack and openly negatively berate people. There’s nothing wrong with being critical, especially when it encourages different thinking on old ways of doing things.
When it comes to discussing policy, it’d be good to have a permalink at the top when it comes to policy for around a week or so to ensure it doesn’t get lost in the other mindless posts that come on here when some MPs seem to treat it as their own personal blog.
1. The loss was not a result of people not turning out to vote. People have a democratic right to vote or not vote. It was their choice and they need to be comfortable with that decision rather. Elections are not about winning votes but about gaining the support of voters. Think about it.
2. Mickysavage refers to “attack politics”. This is exactly the kind of politics that the Labour party ran during the election campaign. i.e. attacking asset sales. You can’t simply change the front bench, claim to have a whole new face to the party, and then demonise so called attack politics against oneself. Time is required.
The electorate clearly stated what they wanted and what they did not want. My #1 piece of advice for the Labour party is to eliminate ties with Trade Unions. They are not helping to advance the party, and are part of the old guard. I hope the new leader is going to help us with this.
@Kate – I’m with Mickey, blogs only work if the commenters add their two cents and I think they’re entitled to feel safe while they tap away!
Cactus: Because if you had a policy up (for example) that said “If I don’t like what you say then I will track you down using your IP in an attempt to get your employer to fire you for writing on my site during work hours”, then how many people do you think would feel comfortable about writing anything on the site?
At least with the policy visible then people are warned about what to expect. And bearing in mind that you are using private information for a purpose that the provider of the data did not intend, you may have to conform with NZ’s Privacy Act. Never been tested as far as I am aware – but I don’t want to be the test.
Tell me what other possible uses you have for the IP outside of using it to ban that user. A use is to maliciously out them or threatening to out them that is detrimental to them in some manner to be effective. The other would be to talk to their ISP to get them cut off, which you’d find quite limited. There is another ISP down the road (d4j had so many IP ranges at one stage it damn near filled a page on the automoderation).
If you have a look around the sites with significant numbers of comments, including both kiwiblog and The Standard as well as all of the media sites, they have clear privacy statements. The only exception is probably publicaddress – and that is most likely an oversight.
It is a major part of the reason why those sites have comments from large numbers of commentators.
Lynn
So lets say a cowardly anonymous commenter doesn’t extend to breaking the law but threatens an MP or their family in another way or is just being a nuisance. I think the authors have every right to know and match the information on the IP address and if possible contact that person and confront them.
Kiwiblog btw has a large number of commenters because it is a very popular blog and David doesn’t censor a lot, The Standard on the other hand has a small number of repeat commenters who you think only comment because of privacy issues. Go figure.
Every time I post a comment at Red Alert I don’t expect privacy of my IP address with respect to the owners of the site. But I guess as The Standard apart from yourself haven’t actually identified themselves ever in public, it is much more comfortable never to actually own your own opinions and operate under the cover of darkness. MP’s don’t have that luxury.
Feedback and comments are critical if Labour MPs are to correctly pick and respond to the mood of the people, to gain more support, and rise in the polls.
Noise and relevance are a real issue in social media, so a lot of sites now have comment ranking or points systems. More relevant or insightful comments, with their trailing threads, bubble to the top.
We each only have limited time to read blogs, so pooling our efforts in ranking or grading or categorising comments would be very useful.
Sites with good and heavily used comment ranking and filtering systems are slashdot and reddit. Well done Red Alert, keep up the search for even more effective engagement.
The biggest, as I see it, is those who would deliberately use underhand and hostile tactics to undermine attempts to demonstrate open-ness and a different way of engaging with New Zealanders. Red Alert’s tolerance will not extend to them.
I agree with your statement.
I’ve watched with depression as discussion threads on Red Alert have been shouted down by orchestrated opposition to the Labour Party. This has discouraged actual discussion, and driven off honest participation, because people could not be bothered with the hostility.
This is a site for Labour MPs to communicate, it is also their site, they are responsible for the content. It is perfectly reasonable for Labour MPs to set the standard they want to the discussion to hold to.
One possible solution to increasing the civility of online commenting is to mandate the use of real identities. See for example this article on slate.com
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/03/troll_reveal_thyself.html
It seems to be the most effective tool out there.
And in comes Sean to prove my point. ‘Orchestrated opposition’ and so on. The current situation is a farce. Fanatical, off-topic leftist trolling and slanderous accusations of posters is fine. Stuff that walks the line but doesn’t toe the party one is shouted down by a core group of five or so posters who cheerlead no matter what the subject matter. It’s always everyone else’s fault but theirs/Labour’s, and no one else is allowed to have an opinion that isn’t the same as theirs, and if it does differ, it’s because they’re part of a Crosby Textor plan to undermine Red Alert, blah blah blah.
Get over it. Not everyone adheres to your particular brand of Labour politics, a point rammed home by the huge increase in the Green Party vote last election. Unless Red Alert wants to start treating their trolls equally, then they might as well give up. That would be a shame.
Cactus
I think the authors have every right to know and match the information on the IP address and if possible contact that person and confront them.
There I agree. If you have a look at our privacy statement you will see that we will contact people if required. However the key difference is that we’d respond privately – your original comment didn’t specify. So the presumption would have to be that it could be in public.
The Standard on the other hand has a small number of repeat commenters who you think only comment because of privacy issues.
Ah no. Incorrect on both those points. Putting words into my mouth on the latter is just dumb.
But I guess as The Standard apart from yourself haven’t actually identified themselves ever in public..
Wrong again. There are quite a number of authors using their own names. From your comments at TS and elsewhere I figured you’d seldom bothered to read the posts.
But if you have a look at the top of the posts you will see the authors names. I’m sure that Mike Smith, Ben Clark, Anthony Robbins, rocky, etc would be surprised that they are posting anonymously. Perhaps you should try that little bit of effort before making such a fool of yourself.
I don’t think you read my comment either. You certainly didn’t address my main point that sites should put up a privacy statement so that people commenting don’t have to guess the intentions of the site operators.
Have you even thought about the issue? Or are you just being a loudmouth?
There are mechanisms such as used on Slashdot.org which allows for user moderated comments. This may go some way to fixing the problems with trolls. It may not fix the issue of bias; even on Slashdot certain opinions are moderated down just because they are not popular opinions.
One of the challenges with Red Alert is that it is a Labour venue, and that we don’t yet have a culture of positive and constructive dialogue. We are still in a mode of discussion that reminds me of religious war than scientific discovery.
I have publicly promoted OpenLabour, and am pleased that it has survived. Personally I would like to see this as a genuine approach to developing policy now. I would like to see the principles applied to select committees if possible – that is a less hierarchical approach where the different stake holders of an issue can come together and discuss policy.
This kind of discussion can occur online, in various forms of media, and in person. Its should be a dialogue where not only presentations can be made, but evidence presented, claims examined and critiques presented.
As I have said many times before; I am over a politics of division. I care not one hoot who is in power. My proposal seeks to make the process of policy development more inclusive, democratic and robust. It is not one that left or right can claim. That said, I stand behind any politician that has the courage to stand up and fight for Open Government.
When we see laws like SOPA in the US it breaks my heart. Clearly this is not the mandate the Administration were given. The people there so clearly have been sold out. I’ll be damned to see this corruption in NZ. There are ways to improve democracy, Open Data and Transparency is one. A more robust policy development process that is not as tightly coupled with political ideology would be another.
@Clare, your Open Government Policy linked to on the 18th November seem to be broken, can you relink to where it is? I’m most keen to see what your brief is there.
I think you are ultimately right that the most difficult thing to manage will be hostility to a constructive process, with concentrated attempts to undermine it. But ultimately it’s Labour’s site so they can moderate as they please. This kind of problem is not new in politics, there have always been people keen to wreck the work of other groups from within where possible. But I see a site where people of varying opinions, even quite radically opposed to Labour’s, have been able to give useful commentary, so it seems to be working to me.
Keep us informed about what your ideas for change are.
Clare, your sentiments are laudable and not very different from the ones expressed when Red Alert was launched.
I am somewhat skeptical.
All bar one of my posts have been posted (including a somewhat vehement and indignant one).
The post that was not posted (no explanation provided)was polite,civilized,rational and factual
The post related to a series of unrelated actions by the Labour Government that contributed to the 2008 loss of support.
When I realized that the post had been censored I reacted with some force.
You denied all knowledge of the post, and I believe you.
You told me off for being intemperate.
I responded that it was a bit rich for a MP to tell people how to behave in discussions given MP behaviour in The House.
It is clear that someone blocked the censored post before you saw it.
My response regarding MP behaviour drew an appreciative comment from a mysterious blog denizen with the sobriquet of “Spud”.
If “Spud” or any other intermediary is going to block blog messages on a blog why have a blog?
A censored blog (apart from matters of taste and sensibility, debatable topics in themselves)is a nonsense.
Open Government and censored messages on blogs do not make a happy partnership.
For the record I have been a Labour Party supporter all my adult life.
@Joel
I like to think of a blog as if it were a persons home. If you invited me in and I started to spit on your carpet and mock members of your family (and no, I’m not implying anything – it’s just an analogy) you would quite rightfully show me the door.
@Lprent – Yeah, I think it’s scum of the earth to out a commenter
“We each only have limited time to read blogs, so pooling our efforts in ranking or grading or categorising comments would be very useful.” – I think all comments should be treated as equal and not have a popularity contest. It’s about feedback right?
@Kelsey – people have the right to keep their politics and their 3D lives separate. It could even impact on that person’s livelihood to have their real identity out. It would also discourage people from using the site.
@peter – me no block you
@illuminatedtiger
Agree entirely. To the right wingers who post here by all means do so, contribute to the debate, criticize the left and say why you think we are wrong but if you start jumping up and down about your comment going into moderation or start attacking using Slater attack lines then you should expect to be shown the door.
The criticisms about moderation in particular really annoy me. This blog is moderated by busy people who do not have the luxury of waiting around readying themselves to respond instantly to your comments.
And before you criticise the site how about thinking of the right wing alternative. Try going onto http://www.nationalmps.co.nz and having a debate about anything there.
@Spud and Lprent.
Agree entirely.
Sometimes it is good to see opposing comments. It makes us raise our game and understand their angle. This site has been far too heavily censored to make it an effective blog. The right has the moderate and open Kiwiblog and the more extreme Gotcha. The Left has no equivalent of Kiwiblog in terms of tolerance of alternative views. It will remain a self congratulatory blog unless it tolerates dissent.
@Pat – Well Said! You can’t censor things you just disagree with. Controlling information flows is not the way to get your message across. Of course if you only allow people who agree with your views you will feel better, but it is not an open and honest discussion.
You don’t want a 4chan, but you don’t want a Red Alert either.
Fix your moderation practices.
@Pat:
You and your fellow critics assume that because right winger’s comments are invariably disapproving – sometimes abusively so – then they are the only ones being moderated. That’s hogwash. Everyone who posts here on a regular or semi-regular basis gets tossed into the sin-bin every now and then by the automatic moderator thingy. They usually appear sooner or later when one of the moderating MPs gets a chance to dig through the ‘sin-bin’. My only criticism is that it sometimes takes too long.
It’s interesting that it’s only the right wingers who constantly complain. The left supporters just take it in their stride. There’s a moral there somewhere.
“it is much more comfortable never to actually own your own opinions and operate under the cover of darkness. ” – kind of like wanting to be able to keep donations to political parties a secret yet gain the benefit from giving the money.
I think people get over sensitive about being moderated and create straw man arguments about their views being censored because they disagree with Labour.I would estimate over 50% of my posts go instantly into moderation and yet many here suggest I belong to the Labour party, love everything they do, and in one or two posters cases I am Clare Curran!
Clearly there is a filter system at play and this automatically line sup posts into moderation for clearance. For some it may be a name, a rude word or whatever.
I also understand that blogs are not immune to defamation laws and those who run blogs are responsible for comments made (and published in particular) on them.
When you write a letter tot he Herald (Garth George – thank God he’s finally gone) you don’t automatically get it published, and they consider themselves open and unbiased.
While some in this thread have highlighted their right to privacy and openess (a hard balance to achieve) we have a government which is hell bent on shutting down the public release of information around decisions it and its Ministries make.
Clare, please make the Office of the Ombudsmen one of your open government policy. It is clearly too understaffed and too well “played” by Govt Departments to be effective. As mentioned on another thread, the DBH has stalled the release of important evidence from its Assessor’s under the WHRS, I appealed tot he Ombudsmen and some 14 months later, no progress, no decision and now every time I ask for that information for a new client, I get told it is subject to
the Ombudsmen decision. Justice stalled is justice denied.
I see some suggestions of shoddy work down in CHCHCH by contractors under the EQC and Fletchers model. Of course the DBH and their blinkered power obsessed employees wont be helping by doing the same things, the way they have always been done and magically expect different results. With a proven bully at the helm, we ought no be surprised when their Employees (not contractors) behave in a bullying way. I won’t name names due to legal implications and bringing down more disadvantage on my clients. But I can should any MP won’t to take this up.
Pat wrote “The right has the moderate and open Kiwiblog and the more extreme Gotcha. The Left has no equivalent of Kiwiblog in terms of tolerance of alternative views.” Can you tell me which sitting MPs regularly post and run those sites?
@Tracey – Yeah, I’ve been called Phil Goff!
Poor guy
Red Alert is great.
A bit less moderation would be good.
I’d like it if there was a way for users to start their own topics; like an online forum.
Otherwise it’s pretty good.
My favourite moments so far:
Raymond Huo defending China’s occupation of Tibet.
Clare Curran accusing Greens of ‘white-anting’
Clare Curran suggesting legislation on how loud TV ads should be.
there have been others but I cannot remember them all
I’d like it if there was a way for users to start their own topics; like an online forum.
Excellent idea. Something like The Standard’s ‘Open Mike’.
I can’t see it happening though. I’m not sure what they are afraid of, but the Lab. MPs like to have control over the subject matter. Oh well, at least they have a blog site where anyone can comment (within reason) which is more than you can say for the Nats.
I like the open mike idea too!
Taking the advice of someone calling Kiwiblog moderate and open is not sensible (right wing, and with a comments section stocked with amateur “SA” types inclined to abuse of those with differing points of view) … the only two MP’s who have ever posted there were from Labour and ACT.
Well done Labour (and Greens) for having an Open Government portfolio.
Red Alert is a useful tool but remains just that. Tools, however well used, shouldn’t become an end in themselves. There is a real danger that excessive focus on a blog will detract from the end goal of Open Government.
What other tools and techniques are planned in addition to a blog? How does Red Alert fit in with those?
One big challenge is Open Government has to permeate every policy, every party member- it’s more about culture and soul rather than an isolated policy. So, re-thinking Red Alert requires the participation, inputs, and commitment of the whole party.
Further, global experience shows Open Government is the first casualty when a government is under public pressure.
I’ve been trying to track down the Open Government policy but can’t find it (or any of the other policies) on Labour’s website. The best I can do is Grant Robertson’s press release. Not a good start towards the Open Government goal.
Continued easy access to the policy is important because it had many progressive elements. For example, while many overseas efforts have equated open government to a limited transparency angle, Labour’s policy went beyond that to participatory governance. Crucially, it recognised that open data is different to open government.
I disagree mate, I don’t think that the whole party should be expected to be committed to it. Each to their own!
Comments regarding moderation by many contributors are right on the mark. The moderation policy IMO appears to creat a barrier for discussion. And this is noticable when there is a dearth of comments followed by a flood as it appears the majority of contributors comments are released. I get the feeling that many who want to have an active party in NZ direction – have been “Managed” out from here.
Many of Labours election platforms had good basis, yet had many areas of improvement. Unfortunately on this site the ability to question and promote both improvements and shortfalls in the policies had barriers errected. You could get the impression that the 5th Lab govt philosphy was still evident: That of “We Know Best”
Clare re “Honest debate and disagreement is one thing. It’s an important part of democracy. Personal attacks, abuse and pack behaviours designed to destroy new voices and new ideas and a different way of engaging are another.”
I agree.
In terms of changes I would like to see Red Alert become less censored in that those with opposing fews are published more easily.
From what I have seen this blog hasn’t been that real & honest at all. It gave the illusion of being so initially but this soon gave way to just being another forum for your supporters to pat you on your back. Sure there are some commentators who don’t support Labour that are allowed on here, but for the most part even if you publish their comments they are soon put off by your supporters who are rarely interested in honest debate and the second anyone says anything opposing their glorious Labour the knives come out & the snarkiness begins.
I also found that MPs would get snarky too – attack the person rather than the issue..
And that’s fine if that is what you want this blog to be.
But if you are going to use it as a campaign tool to reach a wider audience then clearly you have a lot of work to do. The votes are not there and those voting the Nats are either not blogging or are commenting on Kiwiblog & Whale oil (where opposing views seem more welcome – dont know why but right wing commentators don’t seem to resort to the petty stuff as much)
But it is not your supporters that need convincing, it is those who oppose Labour or those who perhaps used to vote Labour and now cant ever see voting for Labour as a viable option ever again.
So I say tell your supporters to pull their heads in and be open yourselves to comments that oppose everything you say & do.
Change only comes from acknowledging there is a problem. Based on polling – irrespective of voter participation, Labour has a lot of problems. You are not connecting with the voting majority.
For the record I have had most of my comments go through although there were a couple during the election that didn’t because one MP – you can guess – found them offensive. Yet they weren’t. They were just honest about the tactics they were using which ultimately contributed to your election loss. I note around the same time key right wing bloggers were being unnecessarily censored.
While you may not ever get the votes of people like me, you would gain more respect my engaging constructively as those sitting on the fence would see you as a party open to ideas and able to debate constructively even when faced with opposing ideology.
I would also look at how your party – never mind the rest – behave in the house. More & more people are looking at Parliamentary TV, particularly after it became a Freeview channel. Honestly the carry on is worse than a kindergarten.
Perhaps one way you could win votes is by not resorting to the taunts or refraining from taunting. Take the Grandma test before you speak/react. Would you say those things/react in that way if someone you respected greatly, held in great reverence was beside you?
Just my 2 cents.
South Dunedin turned in a party vote for the National Party.
I think many Labour voters simply stayed at home
Like to hear your view on that.
People I believe see the same old reacquiring problems which are becoming more pressing with the passage of governments. Politicians just don’t seem to have any real workable answer for resolving them.
Political power it would seems is now in danger of becoming now more about corporate profit and influence than the public good as we face another term of English and Key.
More and more power appears to rests within the corporate world. Asset sales are another step in this process.
Will watch with interest as Labour and its new leadership take on these puppets now sitting in parliament as the current government who represent more and more such interests.
I believe the voting public may well be looking balance between public well being and corporate influence which can work.
Its appears that the public currently believe National came provide this.
I would suggest that NZ currently produces and exports more now than in past times yet many new Zealanders see little or no benefit from such success.
I have supported Labour since becoming able to vote
I sincerely hope to see Labour develop more policy that put people before profit.
Cheers
John
Re MAKING CHANGE HAPPEN and changing the way the Party functions:
Party members can involve those who, as Grant Robertson has said, “feel that politics is something that is done TO them”, if we
(a) Encourage more small branches/groupings [not saddled with administrative trivia], and
(b) Give them the tools/encouragement to go out and involve people in campaigns on issues that they can win e.g. Council CEO’s salaries, so that they experience winning politics.