The Labour party has been resoundingly dumped by New Zealand Voters after almost a decade in office.
Sweeping to power with 59 seats and 45% of the vote, the National Party reached the threshold it needs with backing from the Act Party, which has five seats, and UnitedFuture’s Peter Dunne with his one seat.
New Prime Minister elect John Key has nominated Tax Cuts, Infrastructure spending, Broad Band and a Cap on the number of public servants as his governments main priorities. No mention of Climate Change.
Our friend Rodney Hide (an Agmates “Onya Award” Winner) and his Act party will form a National party led coalition government.
Rodney Hide is celebrating after being returned as the MP for the Auckland seat of Epsom, and will hold negotiations to form part of a National-led government.
There will be interesting times ahead as Hide and the ACT party bitterly opposed the introduction of NZ’s emissions trading scheme.
Ousted PM Helen Clarke has blamed part of their loss on the fact that the Greens did not perform anywhere near as well as expected.
The Greens are back with two more MPs after Saturday’s election, but yet again the environmental party is shut out of government.
Yet that is hardly a surprise as its hard to convince voters of the global warming hype when you have just come out of a very cold winter.
Snow has fallen in parts of the central and lower North Island which have not seen such falls for years.
We are looking forward to some interesting times ahead for our friends across ‘the ditch’. Here is a video of Rodney Hide being interviewed about his views on Global Warming and New Zealands emissions trading scheme. You have to get past about 1m of ads to get to it but it is worth watching.
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Tags: ACT, John Key, New Zealand, Rodney Hide
