National have announced their nuclear ships policy for this week:
"Nuclear ships will not be okay with us this week," said a short but wringing wet party spin doctor, "and will probably be okay, or not, next week either." Pressed to clarify his remarks as a pool of wetness grew around him, the spokes-spinner went on to say that "he wished to make the policy clear, quite clear, so that this issue will no longer be an issue --except if it becomes one -- and so there are no further misunderstandings about our position, which we do have, and about which we've always been very certain. Very certain indeed. Except when we weren't."
The spokeswaffler went on to apologise for his uncharacteristic display of forthrightness. "We're really quite firm that we're not firm about this anymore," he was heard to say to the few remaining people who continued to take him seriously.
LINK: Murray McCully drips moisture over Larry Williams - Newstalk ZB audio.
6 comments:
It all started when Bolger flip flopped in 1990 - the Nats had that election in the bag at least a year beforehand, but he still couldn't help but sell out, lie to students, lie to pensioners.
National wants to gain government to implement a more freedom less govt oriented agenda. The nuclear issue is of little importance to this agenda.
National has demonstrated it is not constrained by dogma, and that it understands the electorate enough to know its current policy created a negative confusion.
Political sense in terms of the electoral environment is what we need to change the govt.
"its current policy created a negative confusion"
Dishonesty in policy often does. We always knew what Labour thought and what ACT thought, but National prefers to fencesit, which doesn't please anyway, just gets itselfs stuck on the palings. If the nuclear policy doesn't matter then it wont matter if the Nats said unequivocably that nuclear powered and armed ships will be welcome in NZ because they are in Australia, the Cold War is over (so arguments about targeting are over) and it is time the debate grew up.
Hardly dishonest or even unclear to intelligent fobservers of politics. The referendum component however distracted from the policy (which hasn't changed).
This created some confusion in the minds of many voters (whipped up by the media) that was injurious to the election of a govt this pragmatic libertarian would have greater support for.
To advance our aims it is important to understand electoral realities, or we start looking at the future through rose coloured glasses.
The policy ~has~ changed, Graham, as it now excludes the possibility of change.
And the "electoral reality" is that no one can be clear what National really stands for (if anything), nor exactly how much they stand for what they purport to.
But hardly anything new, to be sure. Just another instance of a party in search of a spine.
I'm sure if there was a citizens initiated referendum it would become an agenda item for debate, and potential change.
This is not an issue of spine, merely clarity.
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