Sam Crawley

We are experiencing, yet again, the dire effects of dependence on fossil fuels. It's unfolding all around us, like a preschool lesson some deity arranged specifically to patiently teach us the lesson.

Is any organized constituency making that point? Are average Americans hearing it?

Follow up to yesterday's post: Most people accept climate change is real and worrying. So why hasn't the world done more to combat climate change? It's (partly) because most people don't rank #ClimateChange as important, in NZ & around the world #nzpol

threelongyears.crawley.nz/blog/climate...

True! And I think it's always been the way.

I play a 1970s Values party campaign ad for students in a lecture on Green parties - it hardly mentions the environment.

This is the first post on my new blog "Three Long Years", where I'll cover NZ and climate politics using analysis of hard data.

(This first post was also published on the Conversation).

After a summer of weather disasters, will Kiwis make climate an election issue? Extreme weather keeps putting climate change in the headlines — but will it actually matter to New Zealand voters in 2026? The data suggests probably not.

Will 2026 be a climate election in NZ? Unfortunately not, according to my reading of the data - in spite of the weather disasters throughout the summer

In my new post, I show that most NZers are won't be voting with climate in mind #nzpol #climatechange

threelongyears.crawley.nz/blog/nz-clim...

Boost in support for NZF comes partly from voters tired of both main parties (and ACT/Greens).

NZF might aim to appear more centrist (at least in some contexts) to shore up new supporters during the campaign. Opposition will try to paint NZF as part of the right bloc, i.e. not a real alternative

I think the best way of understanding what is going on in #nzpol polls is not to think purely in terms of left vs right bloc. NZF was not considered 'right bloc' until this term.

Nat/ACT have lost ~10% support since the election. Around half has gone to NZF, half to the left. i.e. not a popular gov

Yes, although largely due to the small/fixed number of list seats.

I'm assuming ACT will be strongly opposed to this heavy handed government regulation?

WOW 🤯

The number of times a State of Emergency has been declared this year in New Zealand ALREADY matches the 2025 total.

It’s February.

This is what the Climate Crisis looks like.

Quite possibly, bit it may take a while. Academics can be extremely slow to adopt new tech. I know plenty of who still don't use a reference manager!

The fuel of ‘last resort’: How imported gas became New Zealand’s first choice It's expensive, vulnerable to price shocks and terrible for the planet. So why are we importing gas?

Bit late to it but if you want to know the chain of events that led to us importing gas (and charging electricity users to pay for it!!), I did this deep dive for RNZ last year www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

New electricity levy ‘not a tax’, PM says as Hipkins deems proposal ‘another kick’ for Kiwi households The Government has short-listed possible proposals for a liquefied natural gas import facility.

WTAF?!

I don’t want to pay for this. I don’t want to contribute to climate change. We don’t need LNG. We need more renewables and battery storage.

This makes me so mad, I cannot describe how stupid & short sighted it is because I will just end up rage-ranting.
www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

(As an aside, it's still weird to me to use the phrase "new world order" unironically). 4/4

Ideally, any new arrangements should not be dominated by the West. Although, admittedly, it might be challenging to find many countries outside the West with consistent, long-term commitments to democracy and other values. Important to try though. 3/

Specifically, the new order should not be primarily organised around free trade. Trade is important, but it can't be (almost) everything.

In particular, climate, inequality, democracy should be there.

The EU is a good model for how it can be done (but with looser connections between states) 2/

What should New Zealand do in the new world order? Is it smarter to keep our heads down, or poke the bear as the rules change?

Good to see these conversations starting to happen. The world has irrevocably changed, NZ needs to decide what to do now.

My take: Any "new world order" shouldn't try to replicate the old one. The flaws of the old order contributed to its demise. 1/

#nzpol

www.rnz.co.nz/news/thedeta...

Selecting Diversity: Ethnicity, Party Strategies and Candidate Selection in New Zealand Elections, 1996–2020 - Fiona Barker, Sam Crawley, 2025 Candidate selection shapes descriptive representation in important ways; you cannot be elected without first being selected. Unravelling opaque candidate select...

This data is the basis of work I'm doing with Fiona Barker on patterns of candidacy, e.g.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

For any #nzpol geeks, I finally got around to tidying up and releasing the code to extract details of candidates standing in NZ elections (1999-2023). It's now available as an #rstats package (which also includes the extracted data):

codeberg.org/sam_crawley/...

NZ should seek to be part of a new rules-based system. The previous system was centered around (and largely dominated by) the US. The new system will need to mostly exclude the US. EU politicians are grappling with this new reality, but NZ has barely acknowledged it.

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

True, although isn't the biggest question for any proposed institutional reform: how politically feasible is it?

An upper house or codified constitution seem highly unlikely without a major triggering event. Smaller changes (e.g. electoral tweaks, larger parl) might be possible and still impactful.

Do you think the uptick will be enough to be felt widely? i.e. ease most people's concerns about the cost of living

(PDF) A critique of the polarisation narrative: Expanding the limits of democracy, parties and political participation PDF | To cite: Roch J, Balinhas, D and Mondon A (2025) 'A critique of the polarisation narrative: Expanding the limits of democracy, parties and... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on R...

The ‘polarisation narrative’ simplifies complex issues by constructing a spectrum where good should be found in the middle of diametrically opposed political positions

New preprint article by @juanroch.bsky.social, @daniel-balinhas.bsky.social and I

1/

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

It is astonishing that universities have to pay academic publishers for access to the content that universities create. And everyone just accepts it.

And the current crisis is not the universities saying "we're not going to pay you anything", but "we don't want to pay so much that it bankrupts us".

The inside story of how police protected a senior cop, and prosecuted his accuser instead For years, police leadership ignored warnings about Jevon McSkimming. The IPCA has set out the chain of failures.

Honestly, the IPCA report into the police (mis)handling of the McSkimming case makes for jaw-dropping reading.

But it’s 135 pages long so I’ve read it for you.

Here’s my report on one of the most serious failures of integrity in modern policing history⬇️⬇️

Yes, although we're already on the fringes with some of the changes so far. It could be done as part of a trade/tariffs deal with the US, for example.

I'm not saying it will happen, or even that's it's likely... just that I wouldn't rule it out as impossible.

How Jacinda Ardern’s ‘groundbreaking’ climate law has become ‘a shell’ The Zero Carbon Act promised to lock climate ambition into law. But with key policies repealed, delayed or watered down, the once 'world-leading' legislation has become a husk of its former self.

When I wrote this just two-ish months ago, the premise was that the architecture of the CCRA (zero carbon act) remained, but the policies that sustained it had been hollowed out.

With the CCRA changes today, I feel like that no longer holds

www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-dept...

It seems like the govt has gone as far as they feel is politically possible in hollowing out climate policy. Revoking the ZCA would have been a step too far, but everything short of that is on the table

Is leaving the Paris agmt unthinkable? I'm not sure, especially if Nat/Act win the next election