I’ve been down in the House this afternoon listening to speeches on John Key’s statement. Interesting to note that their whole front bench, except for Chris Finlayson, who nobody has ever heard of, seem to have ducked for cover.
Instead we’ve been getting speeches from Pansy Wong and Phil Heatley. Where are the National Party’s big guns? Where is Gerry Brownlee? Where is Simon Power? Where is Judith Collins?
Colin Espiner notes in his blog:
“John Key has sketched out the direction he intends to take the Government this year. Now it’s up to Finance Minister Bill English to fill in the blanks.”
So why has English rushed out of the House? When is he going to fill in the gaps? If today was National’s first big test for the year, then they have failed miserably.
Now we have Jonathan Coleman speaking for the Nats, the architect of Melissa Lee’s disastrous Mt Albert campaign. Still no sign of the front bench – it’s totally empty!
You call Brownlee, Power and Collins big guns? They might look big but if you listen carefully to what comes out of their mouths they’re extremely light weight.
“You call Brownlee, Power and Collins big guns? They might look big but if you listen carefully to what comes out of their mouths they’re extremely light weight.”
When Phil Goff was reconfirmed as Labour leader, John Key said something about the lack of depth in the Labour Party.
The instant I read that, I thought that statement would apply to John Key and National as well.
English mush have come down with a severe case of diarrhoea mid-way through Key’s speech – brought on at least in part by English’s belief that he should have been delivering it, together with English’s concern about the lack of substance.
Millsy – Labour front bench MPs Annette King, Clayton Cosgrove, Shane Jones and David Cunliffe have all given excellent speeches.
The Nats have already run out of Ministers. Now we’re getting a half-baked lecture from Katrina Shanks.
How the hell did Katrina Shanks become an MP?
“… Chris Finlayson, who nobody has ever heard of…”
Who are you again Chris Hipkins?
I would suggest that the average man in the street is more likely to know Finlayson than you. What do you think the average man in the street would think of what you and your colleagues in Labour calling out “tinkerbell” to him?
Seems even Google thinks you only have half the profile going by search results…
10,800 for Chris Hipkins
26,000 for Chris Finlayson
And Katrina Shanks, Luke? She’s my Nat candidate in Ohariu and I barely know who she is.
English was on news with Key, looking bored in the background.
I have been impressed by Finlayson in the past, although he’s fairly low key. His speech today was terrible though.
@ Luke: that’s not a good measure but if you are going by such a crude and blunt method, can you say what search terms and instructions you used?
I’ve just undertaken a search telling Google to search for “Chris Hipkins” and “Chris Finlayson” on New Zealand sites and came up with quite different results:
Chris Hipkins: 28,300
Chris Finlayson: 19,300
Gary, stop making things up.
The google.co.nz results are as follows
10,800 for Chris Hipkins
26,000 for Chris Finlayson
Here are the links for you.
Hipkins- http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=8U4&q=chris+hipkins&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryNZ&aq=f&oq=
Finlayson- http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=BV4&q=Chris+Finlayson&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryNZ&aq=f&oq=
Huh. I get 18,000 for Chris Hipkins mp and 74,000 for Chris Finlayson mp. Google likes me better.
Luke, maybe your magic google can locate the missing Nat front bench!
Doesnt seem to be on Close Up either.
They must have all rushed home to mow the lawns
Tigger, perhaps Google can locate the missing poll ratings for Labour too?
1. I don’t make things up. I would hope people don’t on this site; if they do, I hope they don’t project it on to others who do not make things up.
2. As a careful reader might pick up from what I had written, just googling for hits is not a good measure. But …
3. If one wishes to do that, then one needs to use more refined and targeted search terms and search instructions to cut out the possibility that the hits include, for instance, a Luke Hipkins (but not a Chris Hipkins) or Gary Finlayson (but not a Chris Finlayson) or include people with similar names in other countries.
The search terms that I used (and they are other ways to refine the search which I will let others find out … this googling thing can get quite sophisticated and can put one ‘researcher’ ahead of another by miles if more refined terms/instructions are used) was:
“chris hipkins” site:nz
and
“chris finlayson” site:nz
These tell Google to limit the search only on New Zealand sites, and the inverted commas tells Google to retrieve results with only those two words.
My results, just being done again, are identical as previously and the results are respectively:
Chris Hipkins: 28,300
http://www.google.co.nz/#hl=en&source=hp&q=%22chris+hipkins%22+site%3Anz&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=%22chris+hipkins%22+site%3Anz&fp=6aed753a793df92e
Chris Finlayson: 19,300
http://www.google.co.nz/#hl=en&q=%22chris+finlayson%22+site%3Anz&meta=&aq=f&oq=%22chris+finlayson%22+site%3Anz&fp=6aed753a793df92e
4. To reinforce the points 2 and 3 that I’ve made above, Luke’s search reveals for example, a hit that picked up Chris Bedford and Cathryn Finlayson (the latter name is not even on the actual webpage, for whatever reason, when you click on the link):
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/story/sport/10625033/
However, BMW Oracle meteorologist Chris Bedford was only “hopeful” the race … New caps Natasha Fitzsimons and Cathryn Finlayson have been named in the New
and for eg, Alfred E Hipkins and the words from the side banner with Blogs Chris Carter:
http://gotcha.co.nz/tag/health/
Alfred E. Hipkins blogs about his recent health experience. … Unfortunately for Alfred E. Hipkins, even though Elidel is expensive and effective against
The search terms and instructions I’ve used, although cannot guarantee that similar hits would necessarily be excluded, would go some way towards minimising such kinds being included.
5. Bea’s search includes the letters: mp. That would yield a different result. As there is no indication Bea used inverted commas to tell Google to limit itself to retrieving hits to those names, the number of hits would be different as well.
6. It may be better in the future, when quoting one’s own search, to indicate what was typed into Google (or whichever other search engine) for replication and comparability.
I trust this helps.
[OK everyone, this is now way off topic. I know that my comment about Chris Finlayson was a bit provocative, so I've allowed this to go on for a bit, but now it's time to get back to the main point of the post, which is why the Nat front bench haven't been speaking in the debate on Key's speech.]
Trevor Mallard knows who Chris Finlayson is.
He calls out Tinkerbell when Chris speaks.
Tinkerbell equals Fairy equals Gay bashing
Unacceptable
Google searches are not particularly telling, since they include everyone with the component names. There are probably more Finlaysons that Hipkins out there.
Back to the big question, why wouldn’t a government front bench show up for this ‘Big Tuesday’ announcement?
They knew it was coming surely.