Mark Keown

For anyone who is interested, I have attached my tribute to Rev Stuart Lange here. He is a legend! It was fun to roast him.... A Tribute to Stuart Lange, No Longer Vice Principal Community of Laidlaw… But still church history lecturer… so not a good bye, but my way of Saying Thanks to you for your years as VP Community… Stuart Lange, not Langey; or Longey; or not langgggg.. but Lange! Or, as I like to put it, S.lang… Slang… for good reason. Stuart Lange, history prof, a man who truly embodies his subject; the quintessential historical prof… Slightly eccentric, crooked smile, hooked and bent nose… you know he has a crook elbow too, took the dog for a walk, hit the chain, smashed the elbow… Of course the dog was unharmed… No Surprise, a lover of animals, each year looking after the animals at the Massey Christmas drive through, donkeys, lamas… etc… Then there is his Einsteinlich hair… kind of a wild man of Southland look… in fact… Stuart Lange A face a cartoonist would die for! The ne...

How would it be possible for a Christian party to get traction in NZ now? I really have my doubts that it could even if there were the will. It would require all the Christians to work together, which seems impossible. Look at the current situation with 4 parties, 3 of whom polled beneath Legalise Cannabis and the Bill and Ben party! Even then, it would require getting 5% of NZer's to agree to vote for them and/or get an electorate seat or two. Getting 5% seems an aweful long way off when the combined vote was 2.8%! Peter Dunne may get another crack in the future, but he was close to losing this time. Can he pull off another one? Plus, he can't go on forever. The smaller parties have built themselves, in the main, off disaffected mainline party MP's (Anderton, Dunne, Peters) who have pulled the plug on the parties and gone alone. Are there others who could come out of the mainstream to work with Dunne and the other Christians? They would have to be high profile, safe seat p...

Another thought on the election has come to me. Ask yourself, is this electoral system fair when a party gets 4.21% of the vote and gets no members of parliament while parties with less votes gets members. Two parties with less than 1% of the vote now have members of parliament i.e. (0.89 [United Future]; 0.93 [Anderton]). Maori and Act have five members of parliament (2.24 [Maori]; 3.72 ]Act]). Yet neither did as well as NZ First but NZ First is not in parliament at all. It seems to me that the system is flawed. Sure, those that got one, Rodney Hide and the Maori's won electoral seats, and one can argue that as a result they deserve their places. But I think there is a problem here. NZ First deserve on a proportional representation basis to have more in parliament than all of these parties. Is the system fair? Then again, life's tough in politics.

The election was a closer run thing than people think. I got onto the electorate calculator and did some sums. The current arrangement on the basis of election night is as follows: The right included National 59; Act 5; United Future 1. All up, 65 . The left included Labour 43; Green 8; Maori 5; Anderton 1. All up, 57 . Now that looks nice and clearcut. But think about this. If NZ First party had got 5% of the vote, which is only .79% more than they polled, and National had goe 44.66 instead of the 45.45 they did get, it would look like this (using the Election calculator ( http://www.elections.org.nz/calculator/ ): The right including National 55; Acts 5; United Future 1. All up, 61 . The left including Labour 41; Green 8; NZ First 6; Anderton 1; Maori 5. All up 62 ! According to this analysis, this would have given Labour the chance of leading the nation with the other 4 leftist parties. Alternatively Maori would have supported the right which would have given the right 66 and the le...

I have to pay tribute to Helen Clark. She is despised by many Christians for her morality and the social engineering of the last 9 years. And there is much to concern us with the liberalisation of marriage, sexuality, prostitution and other laws. I am deeply concerned at the shifts in NZ culture over the last years as we move away from the Judeo-Christian ethic. However, she is not alone in holding these values. Both national and labour have been involved in the liberalisation of these things and earlier issues such as abortion, the greatest social issue of our day. I think the other side of Helen Clark that we have to acknowledge is her greatness as a leader. She has led through a period of MMP and held together government against great odds. She knew where she was going and what she wanted to do and she carried out. She worked with others and kept governments together with the art of strong leadership with compromise and team leading. She was a strong leader who was prepared to make ...

So the results are in for the 2008 election. As it was looking throughout the campaign, National are in control of the country and the reign of Helen is over after 9 years. Well done John Key. He has a tough job, the economy is not in a good state and so, leading this nation, blown hither and thither on the winds of the world powers will be a challenge. Here's hoping that they can manage the economy well through this time and that they can build a stronger NZ. What really interested me was the performance of the 'Christian' parties. Here is a little table comparing their election night performances (these are not final, but the scene will not change that much): National Party 951,145 45.45 Labour Party 706,666 33.77 Green Party 134,622 6.43 ACT New Zealand 77,843 3.72 Mäori Party 46,894 2.24 Jim Anderton's Progressive 19,536 0.93 United Future 18,629 0.89 New Zealand First Party 88,072 4.21 Kiwi Party 11,659 0.56 The Bill and Ben Party 10,738 0.51 Aotearoa Legalise Cann...