By Chris Trotter*
Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production technique revolutionised the recording of popular music in the 1950s and 60s. Simple multiplication lay at the heart of Spector’s innovation. Where other producers would hire one musician, he would employ many. Three, not one, drummers. Two, not one, pianists. Multiple guitarists – acoustic and electric. All dedicated to enlarging his young listeners’ experience. The effect he was looking for – and delivered – was a two-minute symphony.
Jacinda Ardern has perfected her own version of Phil Spector’s wall of sound. A multiplication, not of instruments, but of words. Verbal riffs and phrases that build upon one another to create an edifice of explanation that doesn’t so much enlarge as overwhelm those assigned to question the prime minister, as well as those inclined to listen to her. Among her peers there is no one who approaches the Prime Minister when it comes to talking the talk. She is, indisputably, New Zealand’s foremost impresario of political verbiage.
To describe Ardern in these terms is not in any way to deprecate her. Increasingly, across the Western World, the quality most sought after by politicians – and admired by voters – is fluency. To be at a loss for words, in the current political climate, is a sure sign of weakness. What counts today is polish, style and ease. The ability to convince: not by the meaning of one’s words, but by how well one delivers them. In an age of celebrity, all that matters is the smoothness of the “talent’s” performance.
Nowhere was this phenomenon more agonisingly on display than in the on-screen confrontation between the Democratic and Republican contenders for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat: John Fetterman and Dr Mehmet Oz.
Prior to the debilitating stroke that hit Fetterman in the opening weeks of his campaign, he had been well-ahead of his rival. In spite of the fact that “Dr Oz” is a well-known television celebrity, he was unable to match Fetterman’s working-class “authenticity” – manifested principally through his rough-and-ready working-man’s vocabulary and diction.
Robbed of this easy fluency, however, Fetterman soon began to flounder. His positive medical prognoses notwithstanding, Fetterman’s stroke-induced inarticulateness, when set alongside Oz’s smooth delivery, instantly began to tell against him in the polls. The voters did not appear to care about the candidates’ policies, or even about their characters. The only factor that seemed to count was who sounded most like the host of a reality TV show. Pennsylvania, which, six months ago, had been seen as a slam-dunk for the Democrats, is now too close to call.
As New Zealand enters election year, a change of government may ultimately come to depend on how closely National’s Christopher Luxon can match the Prime Minister in political fluency. At the moment, Luxon is well behind Ardern. Plausible, rather than convincing, the National leader presents well enough under gentle questioning. Pressed to explain his words, however, Luxon’s fluency falters. Openly challenged by politicians or journalists with the facts at their fingertips, his fluency has an alarming tendency to disappear altogether. Unlike the PM, notorious for being formidably well-briefed, Luxon, under pressure, sounds neither convincing, nor reassuring.
The contrast between Luxon and his health spokesman, Shane Reti, is instructive. Even more than Ardern, Reti presents an easy authority. On both the generalities and the details he is a hard man to fluster. That medicine is his profession undoubtedly helps, but so, too, does his ability to think on his feet.
Questioned by John Campbell on Sunday’s Q+A, Reti turned his interviewer’s collection of official statements and reports into a formidable debating point – demanding to know why it was necessary to have so many bureaucracies dedicated to supplying more-or-less identical advice to the Government. That is the calibre of performance that wins a Leader’s Debate in the final weeks of an election campaign: the sort of “Show me the money!” improvisation that enabled John Key to defeat Labour three times in a row. Can Luxon think that fast? Not on current form.
Luxon’s performance also falls short in another important respect: his ability to emote convincingly. On the “performative emotion” scale the National Party leader is positioned several rungs short of the Prime Minister. Sadly, Nature has not supplied him with the highly mobile features of Ardern, who can flash a dazzling smile of reassurance with the same ease that she adopts the pathos of a mourning Madonna, or demonstrates the empathic rictus of a woman who feels your pain. Luxon does cheery tolerably well, but all those other emotions, so critical to a successful political performance: anger, pity, disdain, lofty indifference, intense solidarity; still need a lot of work.
Naturally, all of the above were on display at various points during Jacinda Ardern’s speech to the Labour Party’s annual conference (6/11/22). Unsurprisingly, there are few contexts in which the Labour leader feels more at home than in front of the party faithful. Given the amount of practice she has had, Ardern’s ease is only to be expected. Long before she became leader, “Jacinda” had made herself the darling of Labour’s membership. Her youth, her vivacity, and her ability to string together words that conveyed less in the way of deep meaning than they did of happy feeling, made her the ideal Mistress of Ceremonies at party gatherings.
It is a testimony to just how much Ardern learned about the art of communication at the University of Waikato, that she has been able to parlay her talent as an MC into the skills of a PM. She grasped early what her predecessors – Phil Goff, David Shearer, David Cunliffe and Andrew Little – missed. That what people are looking for in a leader are exactly the same qualities they admire in a game-show host. Warmth, wit, and a complete absence of condescension, obviously. But, also unflappability: the quality of always appearing to be on top of things – even when they are going wrong.
That unflappability, so evident in the hours and days following the Christchurch Mosque Massacre, White Island, and – most impressively – during the Covid-19 Pandemic, is what makes Ardern such a formidable political contender. That sense of being in control – without appearing to make any obvious effort – drives her political opponent’s crazy. John Key has it – albeit with a slightly different performative repertoire. Boris Johnson has it. And so, to the deep chagrin of millions, does Donald Trump.
Phil Spector’s two-minute symphonies made his career. That wall of sound testifying to the unstoppable power of pop music. The other wall of sound, the one produced by men and women who can read an autocue without appearing to, points to another kind of power: the kind that reassures us that even in the midst of chaos – someone is still in charge. Small wonder, then, that the politicians capable of conveying a similar reassurance – without an autocue – tend to win more elections than they lose.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
200 Comments
Great, wonderful, inspiring speaking. Pity about the policies, the execution, the accountability and the ability to drive change through the civil service. It's the second bits that actually lead to meaningful change and outcomes.
But what's a few thousand kids living in emergency accommodation that could be resolved for the cost of what we're on the hook for RBNZ's Covid bonanza. What sort of difference would $9b have made? That's 4x what Kiwibuild was slated to cost. But who cares about measurable outcomes or critically assessing policy when we could talk about how important speeches at party conferences are.
The art of flim-flam has been developed and perfected by PM Adern certainly, but not always. The display on the AM TV show concerning the protestors was a grotesque display. Arms flailing, shouting down the questions. When the facade cracks what creeps into view is of little substance, unimpressive and a little disturbing. Luxon may well be short on such glibness, but he has proven he can run a big business and succeed in an environment that PM Adern herself, has never even encountered.
Prior to his role at AirNZ, Luxon worked for Unilever from 1993 to 2011, being based in Wellington (1993–1995), Sydney (1995–2000), London (2000–2003), Chicago (2003–2008) and Toronto (2008–2011). He rose to be the President and chief executive officer of its Canadian operations.
That's a short sighted comment, if you want to provide for the lower income families you need… $, yes RS dollars, money, mulah and spending more of it than earning, like the current government is doing, is not good for anyone. Like the saying goes "It's all-out the economy silly"
Like the saying goes "It's all-out the economy silly"
That there is a shortsighted comment. That brought us more reliance on pushing house prices up and failing to actually encourage investment in business instead - under Key. Borrowing for tax cuts to spend more than you earn is more of the same as Labour spending beyond their means.
Luxon seems ill-equipped to think beyond the equivalent of the short-term share price, to encompass longer-term issues facing the country.
He'd make a good operations manager in an SOE, possibly.
Good comment Foxglove.
As a communicator, I have always found PM Ardern lacking in versatility in the sense that she doesn't like getting into the detail and wants the conversation to return to her comfort zone; which in my experience is talking in generalities. On the rare occasion an interviewer challenges her modus operandi, they rarely get given a second chance. I agree with Chris about the publics' love affair with celebrity. However, celebrity can only get you so far for so long, before you get found out as lacking substance. I think the public reached that point with the PM some time ago.
Absolutely agree re Luxon. Stick to the point, delete the fluff and learn the art of a pause, to think. He needs better training. He also needs to lose some weight. I will vote ACT no matter what he does, but I need him to win the center vote to make mine a winner.
Tax cuts on property speculators during a housing crisis, to leave working Kiwis paying all the taxes again. Wowsers. That's just pandering to entitlement mentality.
Cutting fair pay while banning patches seems like a failure to think things through, coupled with a bit of virtue signaling on the side.
I have voted for National in a majority of elections and never once for Labour. I voted for Key when he campaigned on fixing the housing crisis and productivity problem.
The problem is a lack of useful policy and willingness to act on difficult issues.
It'd be pointless tribalism to vote for Luxon and National currently.
I disagree. He seems inclined to think he’s speaking to an unintelligent audience and has to explain his point from multiple angles, with metaphors etc. This leaves what he says open to interpretation and attack from the left biased media. An example was the abortion question. Just say the law won’t change under his leadership. Seymour is always succinct and on message. He is leagues ahead of the rest.
There’s no reason - if the PM is *so good* at emergency management, that the government, and a ‘Labour’ one at that, couldn’t have got a few building companies to mass produce prefabricated housing for emergency housing, and build it around the country in the housing hotspots.
A motivated and even semi-capable government could have done that within 2-3 years.
Talk is cheap but action isn't. In fact it seems to get more complex. I watched some movie with John T, urban cowboy. He got married and bought a house for his new wife. Mind you it was one of those trailer homes. When the new wife saw the new home she was absolutely ecstatic. Something she could call their own.
Offer today's young people a similar style house and they would probably be very offended and turn their noses up. As a nation we have been spoiled rotten.
Building the houses is the easy bit. But houses need utilities, roads and services. People need hospitals, schools and other services. Add in council and iwi consenting processes and you have a ongoing delays. Of course the central govt have created this playing field and thus created a rod for their own back.
There’s plenty of government land all around the country, even in many smaller centres. They introduced the Urban Development Act in 2020 which they have hardly used at all, go figure. It allows them to bypass the consenting processes of councils. Sorry, those excuses don’t hold sway.
What does it matter how good a communicator they are if what comes out of their mouth never happens ? It has taken the general NZ public 5 years to work out how useless this lot have been. Huge changes in 2023, its going to be a big year with the way the world is going.
... I got frustrated listening to her because her conversations were all hot air , puff & flowery rhetoric , no substance , nothing tangible ... and she seldom answers a question directly , often wandering off tangent into another cloud of grey waffle ...
How much better a Dave Seymour or even a Crusher Collins , who succinctly answers any question put to them ...
Ditto (to all of you.) The final straw was the farce in Auckland where you could share the barbecue but not pee inside and she dished out like a prim prissy school ma’am something like - I just wish people would do as they are told. As Richard Prebble said about Clark’s government ‘control freaks’ and this lot are worse.
Same Nifty1!. Rarely watch any TV news now and if I do and she speaks I either fast forward or change channels. She talks a lot to say exactly nothing! Always has! Listen to her diction, it's appalling! As I've said here many times, she is the emperors new cloths and worst PM we have ever had!!!!
On her track record how can anyone really believe any word she says ?
Then there are the "lies of omission": the secret agendas & major policies implemented that were never put to the public for an electoral mandate.
NZ needs to vote this Govt out while we've still got a democracy left do it with.
That what people are looking for in a leader are exactly the same qualities they admire in a game-show host. Warmth, wit, and a complete absence of condescension, obviously. But, also unflappability: the quality of always appearing to be on top of things – even when they are going wrong.
We get the government we deserve. I guess I will have to reserve judgement yet again at the forthcoming election.
Originally Joseph De Maistre said "In a democracy, the people end up with the government and leaders they deserve".
How much democracy will NZ have compromised after Labours current term ...& how much will be abrogated should they ever be in power in future ?
Jacinda said NZdrs needed to be more "sophisticated" to accept co-governance:
sophistry
/ˈsɒfɪstri/
noun
the use of clever but false arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.
a fallacious argument.
plural noun: sophistries
Willie Jackson maintains that democracy doesnt mean 1 person 1 vote.
Chris is wrong that she doesn't get flustered ... Mike Hosking used to show her up badly for her inability to think on her feet , or her hatred of being directed back to the actual question ...
... why else did she refuse to go onto his radio show ever again ... he ran rings around her ... so does Barry Soper , and Heather du Plessis-Allen ... Jacinda is permanently in hiding from them ...
What we are looking at in Jacinda's leadership is a deep seated conviction that talking is doing. Talking not as a means to gain support for and enact policy, but as an end in itself. Emoting about housing and child poverty ranks as high in her mind as doing something about it. Otherwise she couldn't fritter money away on the media merger, while there are real and pressing needs out there. The media merger is a proof of the character of her leadership.
You could put a piece of 4 x 2 in the place of Luxon, and National - Act will still win. People don't care who is leading National as long as it's not Labour in charge come next October. Any anyway Seymour is shaping up to be the far more credible and capable of the two, and the big surprise next election is how much bigger an influence he is going to have. Its almost like Luxon knows it and is handing the platform over.
I disagree. Voting for who you want is how people can get what they want. It is just all the people who think like you and don't want to "waste their vote" that ruins election outcomes and entrenches the two main parties. Ending up with USA style elections where nobody likes anybody that they vote for.
National started this under Key's secret sending of Shane Jones to sign UNDRIP (which they had no electoral mandate for), then when it came out offering assurances it was non binding etc. (in which case why sign it at all). All the while through 3 terms being white anted by their co governance Trojan horse Treaty Minister Chris Finlayson.
National cannot be trusted without ACT (or even NZF) to keep them honest.
I know so many people who have joined ACT. Some even went to their conference. They like how straight talking David is, he never implies anything is simple to fix. National has to move left to get back into power and Luxon is this person, leaves a vacuum for ACT to hold the entire Right, whereas the Greens and Hard labour are splitting the Left. The rural vote that didn't want Greens so voted Labour will go back to National (Estimated 6%). Jacinda will goto the UN, and Labour will be back in the boondocks for the rest of my living memory.
I have seen both National and Labour sit in the ~20% region. I reckon we'll see Labour fall because of their unwillingness to tackle some of the hard problems.
Then we will see National carry out what is basically just more looting while kicking the hard problems down the road for others to deal with, and that will see them fall later. They will get in and govern for property speculators while failing in health and other areas, and they'll make wages vs. housing continually and even more untenable, so we'll just see crises in health, teaching, police etc. continue to get worse.
Eventually Kiwis will kick them out because all they did was cut taxes for their own property portfolios and their mates, while making society worse. Social crises will start to bite worse while climate problems become harder for them to pretend are not real and can be ignored.
I don't see in Natbour a willingness to acknowledge crises to the extent of being willing to tell the population and map out a path of dealing with them.
Yeah, a slow train wreck over there also,. Demographics will do it in . More apartments built than people to live in them, more infrastructure built ,that can't be maintained,by future energy or population. And a racist "Han DNA only" ,xenophobia that will not allow mass immigration to fill the gaps.
Anyway,far off topic, sorry.
Early Sept I flew from Europe via Hong Hong. On the last leg next to me were a pleasant young Chinese couple with a well behaved 5 year old girl. They said they were from Hong Kong, had obtained NZ residency but had returned to Hong Kong. Now they were returning to NZ permanently. Clearly all things being equal happier living in China, surrounded by Chinese culture but driven out of China by politics. In this modern well informed world young people in every culture are demanding freedom.
Xi Jiping has massive problems at home, a declining economy, aging population, property bubble and debt. China has strenghths that may enable it to survive without significant damage but the signs are not good - lockdowns, capital and population flight all promise an interesting future - same in the west and most of the world too.
Chris : if the NZ public were so gullible that they'd be swayed by Jacinda's waffle & verbiage , why was the political poll which came out yesterday such a disaster for Labour ?
... the public have woken up to her ... " Jacindamania " is dead .... we no longer want to be led by a government who are more arrogant & dumber than a sack full of Kardashians ...
Would a National cabinet have closed the boarders back at the beginning of the pandemic? And turned off Air NZ s revenue tap. The virus would have got away and killed maybe 10s of thousands.
Would a National cabinet have rolled out the Wage subsidy?
New Zealand's people and economy dodged a bullet by not having a cabinet beholden to big business revenues.
Haha. It’s a depressing choice. I think this government is largely awful, but not convinced in the capability of the Nats. I get the feeling that the Nats will be more capable of executing things, but I am not sure if they will be executing the ‘right’ things…
I have said it before, I think Nicola Willis is OK but I don’t rate her as highly as deputy-leader material. To me that’s saying something about the calibre of MPs amongst the Nats. For me she should be sitting about 6th/7th in the batting order, not second.
.. the problem with Labour is , they've concluded that everything in NZ is wrong , and needs to be re-kiwi-built from the ground up , & totally run from Wellington ....
At least , the Gnats would consult with industry's being revamped ... I doubt they'd dictate from the top down as Ardern's crew have done ...
The closing of the border was only just in time and only because certain high ranking public service and medical officials intervened and twisted the government’s arm. Even then things stalled unnecessarily, such as not immediately sealing off the most vulnerable in rest homes etc. But it is hard to believe that National would have done any better either as in my opinion the problems stemmed largely from the deep seated intransigency in the MoH, a bunker come fortress mentality, which became more and more obvious and counterproductive as the pandemic emerged and grew.
Yep. I don't care much for the fan-fiction around a hypothetical National response (given many people fail to understand it would have been English leading it, not the clusterfark of numpties they had after he and Joyce left) but the idea that we went hard and early ignores the fact our hand was forced by the Australians, who basically made it known they were going to seal off the option of transitting through. Hell, even in early March when I came home from a brief holiday in Aus, there was an A4 sign about people who had been to Italy or (was it Pakistan, I think?) where it was taking off - and only if you had symptoms. Everyone else could just walk on through the same queues, duty free area etc.
Hell, I had friends coming out MIQ in April/May who didn't even have to test negative before they got let out, or get tested at all. In the fullness of time, people will realise just how much the reality differed from the 'hard and fast' lie we got spun.
At the time I had the impression the NZ govt was totally swayed by the doctors and nurses who in turn were motivated by the pictures from Italy - remember how many doctors were seen dying in Italy. I don't think any NZ govt had much choice. Given our Labour govt's hand was forced then they sold it quite well - one of those rare occasions public relations helped. And let's give credit to the opposition parties who basically went with the flow.
Yep. I don't care much for the fan-fiction around a hypothetical National response (given many people fail to understand it would have been English leading it, not the clusterfark of numpties they had after he and Joyce left)
Don't need to do much 'fan-fictioning' when Steven Joyce said that "elimination was a pipe dream" on radio when we were coming out of level 4 lockdown into level 3. The point at which we had in fact achieved elimination.
With him having such a voice in cabinet it doesn't take much fan-fiction to expect that 2020, and thus everything else, would have played out very differently.
That' be Steven Joyce who left parliament in 2018 and who wouldn't have had the full benefit of briefings from MOH etc when making those comments?
But sure dude, keep applying more scrutiny to a fictional National response in your head than the actual response we got.
I'm sure Muldoon would have stuffed it up too, should we be ragging on National for that in a bid to avoid talking about what actually happened? Actually, you know who I've never liked? That imperialist bugger, Vogel. I'm sure we can get him in there if we try hard enough.
Great bread though.
That' be Steven Joyce who left parliament in 2018 and who wouldn't have had the full benefit of briefings from MOH etc when making those comments?
So you think he would change his opinion based on MOH advice? Because if you actually look at what he was saying, it's very clear he believed that businesses would be worse off with an elimination approach, and that has nothing to do with health advice: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/steven-joyce-tells-leighton-…
But sure dude, keep applying more scrutiny to a fictional National response in your head than the actual response we got.
Nope, not doing that at all.
Also not sure why you're talking about people who are dead, and not in politics, as if they're relevant to current day politics.
I am talking about someone who is relevant to modern day politics, and in fact made direct statements about the event in question. Totally different kettle of fish than your lame what-about-isms.
Borders not boarders. Boarders stay at a boarding house or at boarding school. Borders are where nations end.
I voted Labour in my local electorate and NZ First nationally because I thought the Labour/NZ first govt had done a reasonable job. When Labour and the Greens took over Labour showed their true colours. Jacinta is a talking puppet for the Maori caucus and the results are that nothing gets done without the approval of Nanaia Mahuta.
It doesn't matter how well Labour did in their first term, they are a different beast now.
I will be holding my nose and voting National because to do otherwise is just too dangerous for the future of the country.
Chris Trotter can try and play up the false positives of the woman that is betraying her country every day, but the majority of the NZ people know that we are in deep trouble in the next year.
Two things occurred which are significant but hard to quantify. Firstly the late arrival of Adern saw a unforeseen dramatic swing to Labour capturing those becoming disenchanted with the antics of a National government that in search of corporate vindication had lost contact with the people so to speak. Many wary of a Labour/Greens government turned their party vote to NZF (including me) and thus the proverbial handbrake which as you say, was obviously a godsend for three years. Then again in 2020, given National’s abysmal record and behaviour, voters again to thwart the threat of the Greens, turned to Labour in their own right. As said this can’t be quantified but certainly that strategy provided no godsend, quite the opposite as people have now come to realise.
Tim Depositor! That is utter crap! It was Simon Bridges and co that piled on the pressure to force the Witch to lock the country down! Labour would have had to hire a bunch of consultants to advise them over a period of months before it would have happened if it wasn't for Bridges.
The article makes an interesting point for sure. He lacks fluency. And is not actually that interested in the lives of most New Zealanders, let alone the increasing amount of Poor. You could pay those guys to give a toss about the "middle class". Get real.
Chris Luxon will have to debate Ardern head to head in leadership debates. He gets shitty under pressure.
Ardern under pressure is not a pretty sight either ... butcha seldom see it now ... after 5 years , she knows which journos to avoid , and those who fawn over her ..." Jessica , then Tova ... no , not you , Barry " ..
And , she's surrounded herself with a protective shield of advisors ... thickly deep around their queen .. . carefully crafting her responses to predetermined sugar soft questions ...
National seem to be running an exercise in 'how can we lose an unlosable election by persisting with the worst part of our policy package, when dropping them would make us a slam dunk winner overnight?'.
Maybe there'll be a shrewd presser two weeks out from polling day and the top tax bracket, FBB, Brightline and interest deductibility reversals will be nixed and it will be game over. But it feels like that's unlikely at this stage.
Great article Chris.
No denying she is a masterclass orator.
Her Communications Advisers deserve all the taxpayers dollars our mighty country can muster, and some!
That may not placate the countless citizen’s literally thrown under the bus directly or indirectly due to her ideology, incompetence and cruelty! But the PR machine, a paid-whore MSM and the marketing budgets allocated to every Government ministry, crown entity have done a mighty job in ensuring the glue of her regime holds the barbs together!
Her Communications Advisers.....worth every penny and some
I disagree with the masterclass orator bit. Master orators make their voice (mostly) and their words do the talking. Facial expressions are a small part. Obama blows her out of the water. Hitler and Churchill were great orators (despite Churchill being dumpy and wearing badly fitting false teeth which all detracted from the speaking) because their words connected with the listeners. Ardern's constant head movements and meaningless hand gestures distract me from what she's saying, and when I'm actually listening all I hear is platitudes and rehashed material.
Even more than Ardern, Reti presents an easy authority. On both the generalities and the details he is a hard man to fluster. That medicine is his profession undoubtedly helps, but so, too, does his ability to think on his feet.
I didn't get that impression of Reti on Q+A. In sum, in terms of improving the heath system, he said he'd can the Māori Healthy Authority - and would replace it with a Māori Health Directorate within the Department of Health. In other words, moving chairs on the deck of the Titanic - back to the future, and back to what didn't work in the first place.
For a practitioner I was hoping for something about changing things on the ground - bottom up practical, not top down, managerial solutions.
Personally, and as a trained nurse myself, I'd say we need to establish a massive workforce of community nurse practitioners in those locations most impoverished and producing repeatedly failed health outcomes. Nurses permanently on the road - in the community - doing home visits; vaccinating children; improving dietary outcomes; collecting urine and blood samples for preventative diagnostics; early diagnosis of childhood illnesses and impairments, such as ADHD; early detection of stress/mental illness; and the list goes on and on. Our big discrepancies in health outcomes are firmly rooted in the fact that poorer people are over-represented in Emergency Rooms. Many likely to have no access to GPs - and even if they are registered with a GP, there is a reluctance/shyness to get on top of symptoms early.
We need to take health to the most vulnerable communities - not wait until they come to the system.
To recruit nurses to these roles, we should offer free on-line education to nurse practitioner qualification alongside fully subsidised accommodation - in exchange for a bonding to the community for a certain term (say five years) post-qualification.
Believe your strategy, for want of a better word, was already well in progress. The Canterbury DHB for instance under such as Carolyn Gullery, was successfully transitioning more and more care away from the hospital and into the community. Dr Ian Powell has published excellent articles through Victoria University detailing how the MoH attacked and dismantled this venture to the point that virtually the entire executive team was forced to resign.
Thanks, interesting reads - in 2 parts linked below:
https://democracyproject.nz/2021/04/15/ian-powell-a-very-bureaucratic-coup-part-one/
https://democracyproject.nz/2021/05/19/ian-powell-a-very-bureaucratic-coup-part-two/
I worked with Canterbury DHB. Or more correctly tried to. My experience is that they were a very difficult mob, and their self proclaimed 'working together' was mostly a marketing job. Their executive team went because they had to, they were really unwilling to do the hard stuff of balancing resource with need.
I'd say we need to establish a massive workforce of community nurse practitioners in those locations most impoverished and producing repeatedly failed health outcomes. Nurses permanently on the road - in the community - doing home visits; vaccinating children; improving dietary outcomes; collecting urine and blood samples for preventative diagnostics;.......
Agree, but I wouldn't involve the same people that are providing the solutions to the problems they are creating.
I think we should give these guys a call, https://www.ifrc.org/ If we don't qualify yet, we will soon.
Worst Government, Worst Cabinet, in my living memory, perhaps Muldoon got this bad, perhaps........ Did JA not learn in communications that cannot expect a 3rd term blaming your inability to address ANY MAJOR ISSUES on a previous cabinet from 2 terms earlier. WE ARE NOT STUPID we would perhaps vote for Labour a third time if progress was being made, but its NOT. Its now all about co-governance, I will never forget the Auckland Lockdowns, and neither will the 1.5million who live here.
You've obviously glossed over the misogynist memes, denigrating comments and sour grapes from National supporters which have nothing to do with Government policy. Whilst many on the left did the same to John Key - the level of vitriol coming from the right towards the PM has been toxic and tribal to the point of delusion, hysteria and death threats. 3 more years of Labour would serve us well to out the unhinged and have them committed.
Cool, so instead of basic scrutiny for our rapidly unwinding health, education and justice system, you want to panic post about idiots on social media? There have always been idiots, there always will be idiots, except now they can proudly and loudly identify themselves as idiots. I'm not glossing over them, I'm just not determined to use them as a 'Get out of Jail Free' card for a government that only actually does stuff when the polling numbers start to hurt.
You on the other hand seem to be lucky enough to not be effected by the crap performance the government is dishing up, so you feel your vote is a joke and that just insulting people who might expect better is a good use of your time. That says a lot more about your priorities than mine, my good chum.
Schools will improve - charter schools mean increase flexibility so even a crap charter school kicks some life into nearby public schools.
Health may get worse or get better - much depends on investing in training nurses and doctors.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/11/07/concerns-more-diverse-health-profess…
""Ethnic communities say it is common for the children of immigrants to study medicine and dentistry overseas. For some it's the lure of bigger places and broader horizons, while for others it's the capped number of spots in New Zealand universities.""
Why do we have such caps?
Apply magical metrics. Because doctors are thick and need a bureaucrat to tell them to process people in and out faster rather than applying appropriate medical care and being appropriately resourced.
Brilliant plan that has worked so well wherever tried. Also tried and failed by British Tories.
Incumbents are stuffed, whichever side of the political divide they are on.
Look at the Conservatives in the UK, or Democrats in the US, or the Brazil situation, or even polling here now.
Long story short, if you were in charge during the pandemic and subsequent inflationary madness, then you had best start finding a new job. I'm not sure if much of it is because voters genuinely believe the alternative is better, but more a vote against the politicians who led us down this garden path.
Powerdown - the midterms this week will likely be a taster for 2024, by all means bet on Biden as long as you can afford to lose it then confirm Einsteins quote - doing the same thing and expecting a different result is insanity by voting Biden or Kamala or Hillary in 2024 then join the growing ban of Homeless in Lori's Chicago paradise.
Look around you. At the sad and sorry state of this nation. New Zealanders are tired of trite words being spoken at them, and want someone who can actually deliver. I don't care if Luxon is the most inarticulate, non-emotional leader - if he can fix the roads and get the criminals off the street he's a surefire winner. Perhaps we've all woken up to the fact that being dazzled by toothy grins is no compensation for the reduction in our living standards that we've experienced over the last 5 years.
"Increasingly, across the Western World, the quality most sought after by politicians – and admired by voters – is fluency. To be at a loss for words, in the current political climate, is a sure sign of weakness. What counts today is polish, style and ease"
Chris, tell me you wrote this knowing Biden is the most voted for President in US history.
Come on Luxon is not a good communicator. When you cut through the use of fundamentally, let's be clear here and in reality, he does not say much. He says the government does not have an economic plan to address the issue of inflation but he will not articulate one apart from tax cuts which we know will be inflationary. I guess under the probing questioning by Mike Hosking, Barry Soper, and Heather du Plessis-Allen we might eventually get Mr Luxon to announce fully costed policies to overcome inflation and make NZ's economy more productive. A starter question for Mr Hosking. Please ask Mr Luxon how giving subsidies from hard working New Zealanders to landlords by making interest deductible so they can earn a non-taxable gain make NZ's economy more productive.
The big winner out of last night's poll was David Seymour. He must surely be the next finance minister if National and Act can form a government after the next election. I cannot see David Seymour accepting a lessor role with the obvious lack of talent in the National ranks. Anyone ranked lower Simeon Brown (ranked 10th) surely does not have much talent.
Finally, I note Mr Luxon has come up with a brilliant plan to cut our emissions. by suggesting NZ's increasingly warm and acidic oceans could be included in carbon accounting to offset rising emissions. At least James Shaw did fall of his chair laughing when questioned about on Newshub nation on Saturday.
Poor old Scott Simpson took one for the team when he said Mr Luxon meant (note Luxon was not being very articulate) all options should be on the table to remove carbon from the environment, including creating kelp farms in the ocean. I am really looking forward to a Hosking in-depth interview with Luxon on this subject.
Perhaps Luxon didn't 'get' what it was he was trying to say (in other words perhaps he didn't understand the science), but I have read that the same area of seagrass can absorb 35 times as much carbon dioxide as an area of tropical rainforest. We have decimated swathes of in-shore seagrasses as a result of development runoff and in-shore trawling.
If that statistic (i.e., 35x) is true - then surely restoring that habitat would be of immense value/benefit to global warming. In fact, again - if that statistic is correct - one would have to wonder whether it is the rapid depletion of seagrass that is largely responsible for the negative effects of global warming. From a NZ perspective, I'd happily have spent the R&D dollars we've put into solving the methane problem via new technology into seagrass re-seeding instead.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zfxqjsg
Kate - upticked for raising a little known stat although Google disagrees - https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=seagrass+carbon+sequestrat… the percentage -
Yes she is very fluent and well spoken. Pitty most of what she says to us are complete lies.
My favourite one to date was in late September last year she told the press that we wouldn't have vaccine passports in this country when her government had already awarded the contract after a tender process to the software development firm for the passport in the beginning of August.
There are many many more examples of her lying to us.
I don't know about Luxon, but I don't think he is as good a liar as Adern.
I'm now old enough to miss the days when the press held our politicians to account (all of them, not just certain parties) and that our politicians would take responsibility for their actions instead of gas light us the whole time.
addendum: yes I know not all the press are like that, interest.co.nz actually does a pretty good job (unlike RNZ, One News, NZ Herald, Stuff and Newshub)
and yes I know politicians in the old days lied too, just these days it seems out of control
Yes Chch lass, I too have the feeling the Nats want a John Key clone, which certainly never impressed me - he seems as facile as Ardern in his own way. I am very much afraid it is not just that Luxon has not been able to make himself known, I'm afraid there is not much substance there to know - nice man I'm sure yadda yadda - but he's just not political. I cannot see him fighting co-governance at all, as he won't wish to offend. He should step down in favour of Reti or Simon Watts or his deputy, but I doubt he will. I can't understand why Seymour is not polling higher as he has far more brain and guts than any of them.
Chris does not mince his words https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/11/08/much-worse-than-it-looks/
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