We all know the story. Labour doesn’t care much about the law, and the Electoral Commission doesn’t have much energy to enforce it.

These photos were taken within 10 meters of a voting booth on the campus of Toi Ohomoi, Rotorua.

It is prohibited in New Zealand to campaign within 10 meters of a voting booth.

Under Section “197A Interfering with or influencing advance voters” of the Electoral Act 1993:

A person must not—

(a) hold or take part in a demonstration or procession having direct or indirect reference to the poll; or
(b) make a statement that contains a direct or indirect reference to the poll by means of a loudspeaker, public address apparatus, cinematograph, or television apparatus; or
(c) exhibit, publish, distribute, or broadcast—

(i) a statement advising or intended or likely to influence an elector as to the candidate or party for whom the elector should or should not vote; or
(ii) a statement advising or intended or likely to influence an elector to abstain from voting; or
(iii) a party name, emblem, slogan, or logo; or
(iv) any ribbons, streamers, rosettes, or items of a similar nature in party colours.

This applies to the buffer zone around the polling booth.

buffer zone means the area within 10 metres of any entrance, or any smaller buffer zone specified by the Electoral Commission for a particular advance voting place

People have said they felt intimidated and feel this is highly inappropriate. We live in a democracy, and for democracy to function we must respect the process by which we elect our officials. This base lack of respect for basic electoral etiquette (and the law) is a sad reflection on Tamati Coffey, Labour candidate for Waiariki, and anyone else involved. We have these laws for a reason, and it is noticeable that one party in particular continues to flout them. It just isn’t on.

But will the Electoral Commission act on this? Don’t hold your breath.

Location of voting booth and campaign (marked with star):

There is an uproar that even has the old hag Helen Clark with her tits in a tangle…all over this sign.

This was Helen Clark’s tweet:

But, how is that misogyny?

I’m sure no one ever accused Helen Clark of being pretty…being a communist, however…well that much is evident.

She is a communist (only commies call everyone comrade), and some say she is pretty. That is a statement of fact.

Even Jacinda says she is a pretty communist, and even wonders if it is a compliment.

We got sick of hearing Helen Clark nine years ago, why can’t she learn to STFU.

In any case it is pretty clear Jacinda thinks it is a compliment to call her a “pretty communist”.

-NewstalkZB, Twitter

I am not going to make this a crybaby of the week post because the topic of the news article, solo mum Kellie Edmonds has chosen to work full-time to support her five children. That is to be admired not criticised and I am also well aware of how journalists will use a person’s story in order to try to make a political point. She also is quoted as saying that she isn’t looking for help, or a handout.

When you allow a journalist to put the personal details of your life into the media you risk being put under the spotlight of public scrutiny. Whaleoil readers after watching the video and reading the article checked Kellie Edmond’s Facebook page and some were not impressed with what they found.

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It appears from the publicly available photos that Kellie had a holiday in America last year and is currently on holiday in Europe right now.

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Kellie Edmonds is a solo mum who works full-time, and battles to put food on the table and pay her bills each week.

Kellie Edmonds learnt a while ago the best way to make food last a week was to lock it in the boot of her car.

She’s on a tight budget and can’t afford to have her kids raiding the cupboards for an extra slice of bread; she needs it to make their school lunches.

A solo mother of five, she sometimes goes without meals herself to make sure her children have enough to eat.

“I get quite panicked if the boys eat extra food when they get home,” she says, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea one afternoon after picking them up from school. “It drives me nuts, especially when you’re on a low income.”

[…] Edmonds never thought her life would end up like this. She used to mostly be a stay-at-home mum, until a divorce five years ago drove her back into the workforce.

Now the 38-year-old juggles holding down a full-time job with looking after five kids. Her eldest daughter lives in a sleepout in the backyard with her own partner and child.

She works at a logistics company for $23 an hour on a temp contract without annual leave or sick pay, so whenever she has an unexpected day off there’s less money for food.

“I feel so drained by the time I get home that I just don’t want to do anything. But you know, you’ve got to come home and cook tea for the family,” she says.

Edmonds budgets around $100 a week for food, although “there have been weeks when there was only $50”.

“Sometimes we have noodles,” she says. “That’s on the nights when I’m absolutely shattered. Sometimes it’s eggs on toast, or macaroni cheese is quite cheap to make. It’s just learning how to cook on a budget.”

Even breakfast cereals are tightly controlled[…]

“I just feel sick that most of the time I can’t even buy them a $7 box of nutri-grains,” she says.

Edmonds pays $530 a week to rent a house in Manurewa, in the heart of South Auckland. People here are mostly brown, and mostly poor.

Four out of five locals survive on an income of less than $50,000, and more than 90 per cent of those living in the electorate have nothing more than a high school education.

House prices have doubled in the last decade; for many, home ownership is an impossible dream.

Edmonds says she isn’t looking for help, or a handout. But sometimes she has to fight back her tears until the kids are in bed.

“Some days I get quite down,” she says. “When they’re not awake, I’ll ring mum and have a cry. She always brings life into it again, and I feel hope.”

Family support is crucial. Without her mother, Edmonds says, she’d be “screwed” – another family living in a car perhaps, or forced to fully rely on what she feels is inadequate support from New Zealand’s social welfare system.

Edmonds says her mum helps a lot
“Mum just paid for a trip to the dentist, which I don’t like,” she says. “I like to handle myself. I’m 38, for God’s sake!

Her mother clearly is a very generous and supportive person.

“She always tells me that one day she’ll be old and I’ll have to look after her, but I don’t like it. I’m very proud.”

Her mother has paid for an overseas holiday with Kellie and her sister.

Judging by the photos on Kellie’s Facebook page her generous Mum has paid for not one but two overseas holidays.

Edmonds says being poor is a humiliating experience, and staff at Work and Income “make you feel like low scum”[…]

Edmonds says if she’d known she would end up divorced, she wouldn’t have had kids. “It’s a lot harder.”

But she doesn’t think it’s fair for people to say the poor shouldn’t have children if they can’t afford them.

“I don’t agree with that,” she says. “There’s always a way. Although maybe you shouldn’t have as many!”

Looking back, Edmonds wishes she’d had more options as a teenager. She dropped out of school early because she didn’t understand the lessons, and recognises the impact that’s had on her career options.

“I learn by hands on, and I just wish they had a way to teach kids like me,” she says.

She’s keen to see New Zealand elect a Māori prime minister for the first time.

“Personally, I think it would benefit my culture, and my country,” she says. “But then again, it depends on the person.”

She hasn’t voted before, but would consider supporting any party that lowered her tax bill so she could put more food on the table […]

There have long been rumours running around about Jacinda Ardern’s ability to lead…mainly due to her anxiety and exhaustion.

Indeed during various leadership battles Annette King, Sue Moroney and Damian O’Connor have been heard to make such utterances.

So it was with some interest that I saw a supposedly soft piece in a left wing news site mention the unmentionable.

Empathy and approachability are Ardern’s stock-in-trade and they are on full display as she campaigns along the working-class west coast of the South Island, encouraging juvenile offenders to pursue their plan A and laughing with locals at the Blackball Hilton pub, where everyone wants to buy her a whisky. Her famous smile dropped as she spoke with the bereaved families of the Pike River miners. But it was back the next day for a rally of 400 in Greymouth.

It is an impressive performance from a politician who said for years that she was not interested in leading the Labour party, let alone the country. She has given multiple reasons, including a desire to have a family; a concern that her anxiety would preclude her from the top job, the condition having “ballooned” during her time as deputy; and a wariness about the demands of the job, something she observed working for the then prime minister, Helen Clark, in 2005.

and;

Ardern has frequently spoken of her anxiety. As recently as June, she said she was not cut out to be Labour leader: “When you’re a bit of an anxious person, and you constantly worry about things, there comes a point where certain jobs are just really bad for you.”

So how is she managing now? “I am a thinker and I do muse over things a lot and am constantly assessing whether I am doing enough, or what I should be doing more of to make sure I am not letting anyone down,” Ardern tells the Guardian. She has stopped reading media coverage of herself, she says.

“I set quite high expectations. So do a lot of people. For what I do, is the experience that I have [of anxiety] normal? Probably. Probably.

That raises a lot of questions from me, and as a sufferer of extreme depression I can understand her anxiety.

However, this is important. If she has got anxiety problems then that is a concern…for her own health. I know what it feels like and I experienced over 6 weeks of intense pressure at the last election and months of more afterwards. It was not pleasant.

My understanding is that her anxiety has led to hospitalisation and I know of several MPs across the house who remember sending her messages of support the last time it occurred. It may have been something else that caused her hospitalisation but I think it warrants her clearing that up for us before the election. She could easily do that by releasing her medical records…and challenging other leaders to do the same.

The point remains though, that her anxiety issues were sufficiently severe for her to raise that herself several times over the years. These sorts of things do not magically disappear, I should know. In times of high stress, it is easy to succumb again.

I hope she is doing the right thing here, not just for the country, but also and more importantly for herself.

-The Guardian

When Jacinda Ardern was interviewed by Larry Williams she was asked about a video that was already online, which was her closing address to the 2009 International Union of Socialist Youth Festival in Hungary.

Her answer was that she wasn’t sure precisely when it was and thought it was 2008.

She should have been more clear on that, it was 2009 and she was the President of IUSY. You’d think she would remember that.

The media went after John Key because he couldn’t remember what he thought about the Springbok Tour 35 years ago. Well, Jacinda Ardern can’t remember something that happened just 8 years ago…when she was the president of the socialist youth outfit.

WOBH has obtained the video that was cleansed so you can judge for yourself whether or not this woman is suitable to lead this country.

This video was “cleansed” from Youtube some years ago, obviously part of future plans of Jacinda Ardern.

Note again her constant use of “comrade”.

This is the woman who wants to be Prime Minister.

A vote for Labour is a vote for the Greens insistence of a capital gains tax.

Labour wants one too, but they are still trying to hide that.

The Greens would want a capital gains tax introduced in the first term, if they went into coalition with Labour, leader James Shaw says.

Labour’s leader Jacinda Ardern has said its tax working group would look into a capital gains tax and if it recommended one, it would not take effect until after the 2020 election.

However, Green Party leader James Shaw told TVNZ’s Q+A that a capital gains tax would be a priority in any coalition negotiations with Labour.

“There are a couple of things that I think we would like to push them on. One is a capital gains tax excluding the family home because we do have a real sense of urgency about the housing crisis.”

But Ms Ardern said her timeline would not change.

“I’ve made my process very very clear and it’s non-negotiable. We will undertake the work that we have set out as part of our tax working group.

“We will settle on solutions but they will not take effect until the 2021 tax year – if there are any changes at all. I’m sticking with that programme.”

And New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has said a capital gains tax would be “off the table” in any coalition discussions with his party.

Jacinda Ardern can’t make any promise that her timeline wouldn’t change.

It has already changed twice.

If the Greens insist as the price for government then you will get a capital gains tax faster than a socialist can dream up new taxes.

Jacinda Ardern keeps going on about having conversations.

On becoming a republic:

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern says it’s time New Zealand started having the conversation about New Zealand becoming a republic.

“I do think that we should start having the conversation. There are a lot of issues that need to be resolved on that path, and I would have liked the government to have had that conversation when the flag debate came up,” Ardern said during a special PM Job Interview with the Herald today.  – August 22 – NZ Herald

On her tax plans and flip-flops”

She also said National was scaremongering in claiming Labour planned multiple taxes “that do not exist”.

“I’m calling time on the fear and the lying because instead we need to ask the question ‘why are we having this conversation?’   – 13 September – NZ Herald

On mental health:

“Mental health is the epitome of the conversation we should be having about health care in New Zealand,” the Labour leader said.   – September 6, 1News

On coalition negotiations:

Ardern confirmed the Green Party would be the first she would have a conversation with in the event Labour needed to form a coalition.

“We have a memorandum of understanding with the Greens, so the first conversation will be with them.”  – 11 September, NewstalkZB

and:

But it’s been done before, and it’s been done by Labour before. But what we’ve been continually saying in this last week is, it does a real disservice to voters for us to continually have conversations about the make-up of parties   – 6 August – Q+A

On the Green/Labour MOU:

It offers to voters, who we’re asking to support us, some transparency. And I think this has been one of the major issues with MMP is that we are continually drawn into long conversations about the what ifs and who might partner with who. And it tends to unfortunately dominate conversation I think sometimes more than it should. And so we are going to focus on ourselves this election. But I do think giving some transparency to voters, to say, ‘But if we are in a position to govern, yes, we will work with the Greens.’- 6 August – Q+A

On coalition arrangements:

I love this hypothetical, because, of course, this is talking through Labour forming a government afterwards. And, of course, that’s the position that we’re out there campaigning on, to be in that position to be able to do that. But, ultimately, as every election has generated, that’s the conversation you have after the election. We’ve put out a set of priorities – 22 July – The Nation

On Winston Peters:

“The point I’m trying to make is that, we’ll find our common ground. You won’t hear a lot of conversation about that from us in the election campaign. We’re going to be focussed on Labour,” Ardern said.   – 2 August

On Land tax:

Again, Guyon, what I’m trying to do is make sure we leave enough room for us to explore all the options on two things: making sure that we improve home ownership. One of the reasons we are even having this conversation is because the Government hasn’t done that.  – 5 September, Radio NZ

I don’t know who has coached her to talk like this but when you hear it over and over again it sounds contrived and rehearsed, which is it is. Her media minders have given her a grab bag of slogans to cover up for a lack of policy.

One of those slogans is to constantly deliver a “conversation” line, probably with her “concern face”.

Jacinda needs to start having a little less conversation…a little more action:

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CORIN: They do need passion now. Cos now those who might have been hoping that you would be the politician that might finally deal with New Zealand’s issues with capital and taxing capital and fairness, and you’re not.

JACINDA: But I am still doing the work, Corin. And I will in government still make that decision, and if required legislate on that decision. The thing I’ve pushed out is the time it takes effect. Because that then means I can balance both the urgency I feel with the feedback that the public strongly gave me. And I had to listen to that, you know? And so in my mind, if it took just a matter of a few months to find that balance between the two, then that was the right thing to do.

CORIN: What else will you flip-flop on?

JACINDA: I haven’t. I’ve maintained that sense of urgency. And actually I still think there’s leadership in listening as well. And I know when I came out on this I was taking a risk. I felt strongly enough about it to take that risk. But if it was a question of simply a matter of months in order to be able to listen to people too, that seemed like it.

As an observer of political communications for well in excess of 30, almost 40 years, I have to say that’s just pure poetry.  It’s delivered with a concerned face and all the right gestures so we can “feel” her dedication.

Pity it says nothing at all.

John Key constantly got in trouble for saying exactly what he wanted to say.  But the voters forgave him many times because they felt the upside was that we would get a real answer from him.

Bill English isn’t like that, and this is why National have been sliding downwards since he’s been the party’s head-communications-head.

The problem for Jacinda is that election time is the only time people actually listen to politicians.  They don’t just go for ‘the vibe of it’.  They want actual answers.

This is why Labour might still fall short.  And they know it too.  The pressure on Labour supporters to do advanced voting is evidence of this.

More and more people are waking up and realising voting Labour isn’t the masterfully nice picture of the future that Jacinda managed to beam into their living rooms for the first three weeks.