Labour Party leader Phil Goff is expected to stand down as leader of the party when Labour's caucus meets in Wellington on Tuesday.
Goff said yesterday he took responsibility for Labour's 27% share of the vote in Saturday's election.
Radio New Zealand polical editor Brent Edwards said this morning that, of the two front-runners for the job, he understood David Parker had the edge over David Cunliffe.
Many Labour MPs are apparently "furious at what they see as Mr Cunliffe's lack of support for Mr Goff" over the last year.
Who do you think should be the next Labour Party leader?
Should Phil Goff stay on as party leader?
Is it between David Cunliffe and David Parker?
Who else could be in-line for the job - Shane Jones, Grant Robertson, Andrew Little, Maryan Street, David Shearer?
55 Comments
It seems pretty clear they need some fresh legs. Their list has way too many people tainted by the stink of the clark/cullen years....people who believe that they ran a fiscally prudent government (low debt) and seem to have no guilt about allowing a housing bubble to inflate to the point where it endangers the economy.
I'm picking Cunliffe and Parker both think they've done their time and so now deserve a crack but that is ultimately selfish thinking. They can't escape the stink. Too many lifers/troughers.
Does anybody know about Ardern and Robertson? All I know about Ardern is that she has magnificent choppers. But maybe they need someone like Little - a pro-union pro-worker scrapper.
They need to clear the deadwood, but I doubt they actually will. Too hard to get the pigs from the trough.
Yes , Grant Robertson would be the ideal man to lead NZ Labour , which is why I think that David Cunliffe will get the gig !
...... they really gotta figure out where they're disconnected from the public ......'cos we aren't changing our views to suit them !
And they need to boot some of the tired old hacks off that party list , and bring some of the fresh young talent into play .
The ghost of Helen Clark hangs over NZ Labour until they change policy & personnel .
The Labour Party is a dinosaur. They need to change their name and get a bit more positive and aspirational. People want less tax,less government intervention, less governement spending and when people get ahead they want less taken off them just because they are working hard and making progress.
you're right Ex-A
the nats have gobbled up everything from the centre all the way out to the Banksian-lunatic-fringe - making it a big tent indeed.
Labour's left has been fractured so obviously they need to do something new....perhaps go through the successful parts of europe (ie some of the scandinavian ideas around social health and education, and oil revenue management and green tech) and asia (singaporean currency mgmt )
The thing is I really don't think Key was unbeatable this last election, there was no way he'd lose to Goff, but he had weaknesses. It was just that so many Labour lifers still had their big clown gloves on from the Clark/Cullen years and so couldn't land a punch.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history......
interesting comments VL
"big tent" can lead to fractious problems, as they start splintering & infighting, & requiring heroic efforts by the leader to keep them on song. So Key mightn 't be smiling so much in another year or two
re the name - I often wonder whether they should go to the Social Democrat name or similar. "Labour" is such a negative turn-off name
I agree about needing to re-invent themselves
Cheers to all
I agree the name Labour, the colour red and their negativity is just very depressing. For me in this day and age their brand conjures up thoughts of big old smoke belching factories, dirty freezing works, aging unionists and electorate offices which are like scenes from the TV show "Gliding On".
The Greens on the other hand, although more leftist than Labour, seen more upbeat and positive. I sit right of centre but could one day vote Green once they mature and drop the social engineering stuff which at the moment I believe is the part that turns off the voters like myself.
Delboy: give up all hope. The Greens are a pack of school teachers, hopelessly wedded to big government spending & regulation. I admire the discipline the Greens have shown, and some of their policy, but they will never move from the far left. They will always remain a niche party.,
Cheers
Alex - Why do you not address some real issues around this insted of posting what is effectively a tabloid style tid bit?
Of those names mentioned in the tid bit - Andrew Little understand that we can't pay back our debt, and because of that we are no longer a sovereign nation.
Parker and Cunlife are both stooges and lightweights - Neither have any idea of how to address NZ's problems, and more than I would estimate 99% of the MP's or 99% of those who contribute here...Why, Because they do not understand or want to accept the root cause of the problems..
Until that happens the rest is a WASTE OF ENERGY!
Imagine her , togged out head to foot in skin-tight black leathers , a cat-o-nine-tails in one hand ...... that fiendishly surly grimace upon her countenance ..... Dominatrix Hell-en does it all ...
.... are you man enough , Chairman ..... to suffer for your sins ...... hmmmm ?
I was thinking today that the Labour Party has to radically reinvent themselves. The election result has shown that they've failed to adapt to the fundamentally changed social environment. The Labour movement in New Zealand is finished. They're in the ironic position where the PSA is argually their core constituency, most of whom are staunchly middle class. And even there many have been lulled by John Key's soft approach to change and have embraced the National Party, many of them likely wouldn't have contemplated such a thing in the 1990s. Demographic change also likely has a decisive influence. Labour is likely now perceived as the woolen jumper and dowdy cotton smock party. A party for folks not quite old enough to vote for Winston Peters.
John Key and his political advisors have shown admirable genius in their softly softly boiling the frog approach to structural reform and have managed successfully to broaden their electoral base in the last few years. They've divested themselves of the reckless all at once structural reform approach that proved so unpopular during Jim Bolgers electoral term, which culminated in the sacking of Ruth Richardson and the National Party's ignoble defeat in 1999 at the ballot box. The current Party's reform agenda is every bit as radical as their predecessors, but their tactics are incremental, basically swiped from those of their ideological enemies, the Fabian socialists. Perhaps after the next term New Zealanders will wake up in a vastly different nation, wondering how it all happened. Good luck folks, is all I can say.
I think you're right, Anarkist. Times have moved on but Labour has not kept up with them. They seem stuck in the politics of their youth, the 1970s and 80s. Hippies, Muldoon, Lange, nuclear free NZ, workers vs employers, Gay rights, Maori rights and Women's rights. All that was 30 years ago. They need some more Now people.
Yes you're right David B, they have not kept up with the times, but you have to be aware that Labour are a fundamentally divided party and one could say the same about all the political parties in parliament. Michael Cullen' was suitably chastened after his reported comment, "we won, you lost, eat that" back in 1999, once he was made aware who had the true power in our society. And as Fran O'Sullivan says heirs appararent professed a business friendly when they were in power, so one would assume they would continue along those lines should they regain office, once they set aside their "politics of envy" rhetoric they use to appeal to the quedulous electorate.
"Finance Minister Michael Cullen's standard riposte to uppity business folk: "We won, you lost, eat that" - is not the order of the day when it comes to Labour's new generation of ministers, who now lose little opportunity to promote themselves as "on business's side"."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/fran-osullivan/news/article.cfm?a_id=13&objec…
The Labour party were solid advocates of Fabian "Third Way" politics that perceives there to be no intrinsic need for there to be antagonism between Capital and Labour attempts to reconcile their disparate demands. Using the apparent magic of the Financial Sector was a key strategem for them under the rubric of Public Private Partnerships. A delusion aim if there ever was one, especially when faced with modern realities.
"Under the last Labour government, legislation was brought in to support "good faith" behaviour between employers and employees.
The buzzwords and mantra over the past decade in the CTU and Business NZ was "productive workplace partnerships".
The conventional wisdom was that if workers and employers worked together as partners on things that they had in common, then that would lead to better profitability, and consequently better wages and conditions for employees."
http://www.unite.org.nz/node/557
What people fail to be cognizant of, is that we've moved into a completely different reality now, where global cooperation and joint action in achieving shared goals of prosperity and social stability no longer defines world affairs as prevailed in the wake of the Bretton Woods conference. Now we live in a world defined by ruthless, cut-throat, dog eat dog, competition between super powers and those who fight over the scraps. The past decade, an era one could indeed describe as the Great Moderation, represents the last gasp delusion that we can reconcile the profit maximising impetus of unleashed corporativist capitalism and social equity and stabiity. We're going to suffer through the ultimate hangover from that delusion for some time to come. If not a severe toxic shock, after a reckless binging session.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1944/440722b.html
"Like European enterprises in the 19th century, US companies have enjoyed “home field advantage” throughout the 20th century. They dwelt in the most vibrant economy, drew upon the most mobile and best-educated workforce, enjoyed the most plentiful sources of capital and sold in the most attractive market for goods and services. If a company wanted to be significant, it had to win in the US market...
Now we are into the 21st century and it is already clear that home field advantage is crossing the Pacific. In this century, China and India look to be the great canvases upon which economic successes will be painted. ...
If Americans and Europeans want to win in the 21st century, we must learn to play better in away games. As this new world dawns, we are beginning to experience the dark side of natural selection, the perspective of those selected against, rather than for. This is Darwin ... wielding the sharp, pointed stick of failure. Interestingly, it is failure – most dramatically the threat of extinction – that drives evolution, not success. Successful species do not mutate: they ... breed until such time as they consume all the free resources in the ecosystem and only then do they begin to mutate... That time is now."
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/04/its_a_fish_eat…
the wool farming lobby will appreciate having a Shearer in a leadership role.
Mr Little could try hard at being deputy and imagine the possibilities with headlines e.g
"Little wonders at Big Loss " etc
PS - why isnt Mallard having a shot at it ,anyhow ? Tau reckons he packs a punch
Seriously , you are a sh*t-stirrer , DB ......... DC's own colleagues hate him ! .... and David Parker has an unenviable likeness to both Phil Goff and to Aussie Kevin Rudd .......
...... if NZ Labour really wanted to challenge the Nats in 2014 , they need to think outside of the incumbent Helen Clark brigade .....
Grant Robertson as leader , Jacinda Ardern as his deputy ! ....... the Gummster hath spoken .
Co-leaders - Lianne Dalziel and David Shearer.
Take a leaf from the Greens recipe - co-leaders,
one male, one female
one humanitarian, one lawyer
one new, one experienced
And the difference about Lianne as one of the experienced - she stood down from the list, putting all her eggs in the electorate basket... a principled stance.
And in opposition, one of the big ticket items they should agitate on is the Christchurch recovery disaster. Time to take the gloves off on that one and start pointing out that National has done nothing but add bureaucracy and incompetance - while the flight of people is destined to be dwarfed by the flight of capital, once the insurance payouts come to fruition.
Too bossy, too yesteryear .... actually Labour has no talent of the stature of someone votable as Prime Minister. And really, who cares? Winston will be Leader of the Opposition for the next 3 years.
Labour is just so strident, and bossy, and ..... reminiscent of your school teacher - oh yes that's right most of them are ex-school teachers....
But they aren't choosing a Prime Minister!!! That's the whole point!
They are choosing the best amongst themselves as Opposition leaders. Yes, Lianne is an effective bossy, battler - imagine she and Winston as a tag team at Question time. The Opposition needs "oxygen", sound bites while in opposition. That's what keeps you relevent and in the game. Goff failed miserably in that regard - which is why Key had such a dream run with the media - nothing "saleable" was happening on the opposition benches. Parliament was boring - government was boring, and that was reflected in the poor voter turnout.
We need an effective opposition that makes politics popular - Winston and Hone can't do it on their own ... and a bossy female with debating experience would add plenty to the fun of it all. Lianne for example has been a hit on that TV programme Backbenches (or whatever it's called) - she's got a quick wit and can think on her feet. She can teach the less experienced David Shearer plenty if they worked together as co-leaders. And were they co-leaders, Labour gets two for one in the media stakes as both their opinions would be worthy of reporting.
Grant Robertson & Jacinda Ardern would be fresh beginning for Labour , a dream-team of world experience and youthfulness ....... Fresh ideas and a zing of energy : Ka-powie !
..... or we could get some of the old hands , from the failure years , various Davids , a Ruth , a Lianne or so , or some clown ex-union boss who was despised by his own union members .. same old , same old ...
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