This could be quite dull

Mr English raised the issue in Parliament today, and said if Mr Benson-Pope urged people to vote for Labour it would amount to election advertising under the Electoral Finance Act.

From the ODT.

You know. I really hope that this election isn't all about violations of the Electoral Finance Act. I can't think of a more boring way to conduct an election.

Who even cares?

Why must the likes of TV3 rabbit on about the "golden rules" of politics? Apparently Phil Goff has broken them by acknowledging that Labour are behind in the polls and that they might lose the election and by discussing leadership after Helen Clark steps down.

What are these golden rules? They're just a buzz-phrase that reporters/journalists throw out that have no real significance in, well, anything. Phil Goff does something different, like stating the obvious and suddenly he's broken the golden rules. He might as well have raped a table. The media are just trying to make a mountain out of a molehill (to use an often-used phrase).

It's a pity that we live in an environment where the media are looking to grab onto anything to make a story out of. It would be so much nicer to live in a world where things were less sensationalised and rather have more intelligent discussion going on. I guess this just doesn't add up to big dollars for the media though. Pity.

Election Prediction (The Wild Guess)

I like making a wild guess, getting it down on paper (or blog) and then getting it out months later and having a good laugh. Without further ado, my predictions for the New Zealand Election this year.

National: 53 seats
Labour: 47 seats
Greens: 8 seats
Maori Party: 5 seats
ACT: 3 seats
NZ First: 3 seats
Progressive: 1 seat
United Future: 1 seat

That makes a total of 121 seats with the Maori Party providing the overhang. This situation will call for some complicated coalition building.

I'm also envisioning a situation where ACT and the Greens get less votes, NZ First is booted out completely (Winston Peters doesn't win back his Tauranga seat), the Maori Party get less party votes and National picks up the majority of these votes. That'll look like:

National: 58 seats
Labour: 49 seats
Greens: 6 seats
Maori Party: 5 seats
ACT: 2 seats
Progressive: 1 seat
United Future: 1 seat

That's 122 seats. Oh well, so much can change before election day.