Hard News: Metiria's Problem
333 Responses
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izogi, in reply to
Personally, I'm just going to do something weird and vote for the party whose policies I most agree with.
That's fine as long as you trust the party of choice to actually follow through and fight for or implement the policies as advertised.
I've found The Spinoff's Policy tool interesting, but mostly in terms of how I used it. It's built around selecting the policies you like after which it'll tell you which party has the most of your favourite policies, but I found myself looking at similar policies from different parties and second-guessing whether I thought that party actually had any genuine intent to push the policy in a way I wanted. eg. I had a strong bias against including much from National in my preferences, even if some appeared consistent with other parties, simply because I feel I'm already aware of how it's treating so many of those stated policies and that's part of the reason I'm really struggling to consider voting for it.
In NZF's case I wonder if many supporters like it for the one or two things they care about (if not simply Winston's attitude), yet strong in the belief that there's no way in hell that NZF will follow through with some of its other policies that those supporters might think are insane.
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simon g, in reply to
Russell Norman is still listed as the co – leader, compleat with contact details.
Link, please.
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So, a historic press release then. We can access those online going back to the last century.
It's therefore unreasonable and misleading to cite that as an example of the Greens policy (and people) information being out of date. It isn't.
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izogi, in reply to
So it’s all down to the personality of the leader, and some of the other potential MPs. Education for instance, talks about how much money in billions will be added, and how that’s also going to ballence in the books. But there is no indication there is any plan to even review national standards.
This is the sort of problem I've been struggling with for TOP. The leadership's said lots of interesting stuff which I find engaging (plus the odd thing that makes me really mad at them), but there also seem to be big gaps in the written policy.
eg. I care about a variety of things, but one area I care deeply about is Conservation policy. I've repeatedly been referred to TOP's Environment policy, which is packed full of incentive-speak about things like river pollution and climate change, but says virtually nothing about management of 1/3 of the country that's Conservation Estate, nor even mention words like 'pest', 'predator' or 'conservation'. The only vague reference to it is about a $20 border levy for investment in biodiversity and local infrastructure. There's virtually no detail about expected outcomes, costs of administration, or... anything really about what TOP actually wants.
It's not that TOP doesn't care about conservation policy. Geoff Simmons says plenty at random all over the place, but as far as I can tell none of it's clearly written down or formalised. It's just his personality speaking. So if I'm to vote for TOP on that basis, I feel like I'm really just voting on some kind of enthusiasm and trust that the leadership will "do the right thing", whatever that is. Maybe people who choose TOP genuinely only care about the issues on which TOP's defined and announced comprehensive policies, but beyond that I'm not sure how it's different from someone who votes for Labour because they trust Jacinda, or voting for NZF because they trust Winston, which it seems to be trendy to criticise people for.
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I wonder how long it is going to take for it to sink in that TOP is nothing but the re-skinned libertarianism of a stale, pale old male rich enough to favour us with his eccentric solutions.
Gareth Morgan reminds me of that dangerous old fool of the Lange government, Trevor De Cleene.
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Jane Bowron goes completely off the rails in today’s Dominion Post (p3, “Motels, memorandums and dunny misalliances”; the online version has a different title). She starts promisingly enough by noting that Greens have NOT sought any electorate lifeboat from Labour despite “disaster polls” … but then spends four slanderous paragraphs imagining that Shaw did just that in Wellington Central, using her fabrication as a platform from which to mock the Greens as “unsustainable” and a “pity party”.
Is it too much to ask supposedly serious political commentators not to veer into pure fantasy? (Note also the exaggeration of “disaster polls” – I thought there was only one unexpectedly low result so far?) -
Dunne done running...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/95988656/peter-dunne-resigns-from-politics-only-weeks-out-from-the-election
There goes National's coalition, and after Seymour's ungrateful little broadside book he may not be currying so much favour...
...Paula Bennett may be regretting giving all those clothes away now, she might be looking for a job herself.And yeah Jane Bowron is all over the place, a barely wadeable stream of consciousness!
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Every time I pop out for lunch a party leader resigns. Bill English may want to deliver sandwiches to my desk.
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Back to Metiria's problem, the Guardian produced a useful summary of the situation today:
The crime for which this tide of hate would have been proportionate is hard to imagine: in fact, it was spurred by her admission that she committed benefit fraud in the early 90s, a confession she made freely to highlight how hard it was then, and is now, to raise a child as a single parent under New Zealand’s notoriously punitive welfare system.
More than half of all that country’s benefit claimants owe money to their work and income department, in what appears to be a version of Gordon Brown’s working family tax credit overpayments, where you identify the country’s poorest families, pay them slightly more than you intended by a metric you haven’t really explained, then saddle them with a debt they have no hope of repaying. When you get to the point that these debts affect 60% of claimants, this is no longer a glitch in the system: this is the system.
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izogi, in reply to
The departure of Dunn opens an opportunity for an anti 1080 champion
How so? Did anyone who dislikes 1080 vote for United Future because of it in recent times? From browsing the various communities, I mostly see anti-1080 crowd backing either Ban1080 or NZ First... but there's been mounting suspicion about whether NZ First is trying to rip them off as gullible voters. That wasn't helped by Dennis O'Rourke declaring a policy at the recent ETS conference which largely contradicts most of what Richard Prosser's been telling them.
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Listen, laugh & learn as Metiria Turei, Poto Williams, Marama Davidson, Megan Woods and Golriz Ghahraman discuss their lives & their journeys into politics. -
izogi, in reply to
Yes I think UF picked up at least some of that policy when it ran with Outdoor Recreation New Zealand from 2005. Hunting circles have always been a place where 1080 use is controversial, but even many in those groups are much less concerned than they used to be.
I forgot all about NZ First.
They're seriously going after it, especially Richard Prosser, I guess because in the MMP world a few thousand votes can cross a threshold to another MP. Prosser likes to hang out in Facebook anti- groups like 1080 Eyewitness where he religiously agrees about how terrible 1080 is and rallies their support in favour of an immediate 1080 moratorium to aerial 1080 drops (while we survey the entire landscape and reconsider, etc). Then he goes to the 1080 support forums where he can be seen, seeks out certain specific people whom the anti-1080 brigade hate with a vengeance, and gets into flame wars and insult fests with those people. But it's mostly been a sideshow for that extreme niche audience. Prosser's weird conspiratorial rant at the end of Backbenches, several weeks ago (4m:05s), was an exception to this. He also said plenty in earlier segments of that episode.
So I think NZF is most likely to get anti-1080 votes if they go to anyone useful. I'm sceptical if it'll actually amount to anything, at most token gestures. NZF already has so many bottom lines and none of them mention 1080... probably because there aren't many people out there who really feel that strongly about it either way compared with everything else happening.
(Correction: In my previous comment I typed ETS conference when I meant to type EDS conference [for Environmental Defence Society].)
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Senior Green staffers resign.
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izogi, in reply to
I thought it was strange to see that Andy Foster, a sitting Wellington City Councillor since 1992, recently signed up to run as Wellington Central candidate for NZ First. I guess his reasons are his own, but he's been a strong proponent of Wellington's pest control programme. Aside from the brodifacoum bait stations everywhere, that policy's even seen an aerial brodifacoum toxin drop to initially wipe out pests in the Zealandia sanctuary. A very similar aerial brodi drop in Nelson right now, for setting up the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary, has certain anti-1080 campaigners in a rage... even though it's more of a general rage against aerial poison than specifically 1080.
A contact of mine recently quizzed Foster on NZ First's 1080 policy. She reckoned he didn't actually know about it, yet upon being told he agreed there needed to be some tidying up of that policy... or something like that. To be honest it's not too surprising you'd not know about NZF's 1080 policy if you wanted to know about its stance on conservation, because the Environment and Conservation policy makes zero mention of it, despite 1080 obviously being a key part of NZ's existing conservation programme. To see the 1080-related policy for NZ First it's necessary to read the Outdoor Recreation policy --- they want hunters to see it but not environmentalists --- yet even that policy is open to interpretation as to exactly what it entails, and says nothing about the immediate moratorium that Prosser's been talking about.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
I don't understand a party employing hired guns whose underlying allegiance is to a very different party.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Read them both – much of what is in the E&C policy is equally as open to interpretation or just plain “open ended”. One that is pretty clear is this one however,
Rights to take and use water are available only to New Zealand people (citizens and permanent residents) and New Zealand owned companies, and must not be alienated to overseas persons or interests whether directly or indirectly.
I do wonder just how many current water take permits are held by majority shareholders from offshore. Bet it’s huge. One assumes that specific legislation would be needed to revoke all permits nationally and then a new application process would need to be run. Suspect it would run contrary to a number of FTAs as well.
It does concern me that they run so many ‘pie in the sky’ policies that if/when in coalition they never have to be accountable for.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
For instance, Marsden Point is owned by Z Energy and several overseas oil companies and uses huge amounts of water. So does BHP owned Glenbrook steel works. Not to mention Tiwai Point.
Are the NZ government going to buy these substantial, if dying, assets? Or will they close down - that'd be popular...
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Sacha, in reply to
How so?
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
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linger, in reply to
Oh. I read Sacha's question as "How would closing them down be popular?" and assumed you were merely being sarcastic on that point.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Oh, I was (those plants are all in places where NZ First attracts its votes. Marsden Point is right next to Peters' electorate. I guess some of his voters might work there).
I thought they wanted to know how big industrial plants use water.
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Another interesting fact: maybe six times more water is used making a plastic (or glass) bottle than the bottle contains.
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I'm completely unsurprised that, with Dunne's withdrawal, the Greens have re-entered Tane Woodley as a candidate in Ohariu.
I am quite taken aback at the amount of people in the comment threads who are expressing disgust at the Greens for running a candidate in an electorate they'll not win, accusing the greens of splitting O'Connor's vote, labelling this as a desperate hope to win an electorate because they're under the threshold, etc etc.
I know the tone of Stuff comment threads are largely dependent on a combination of whoever's stuck on the overnight moderation shift, and whichever sewer blog (or enlightened forum) happened to link to an article first, but it's almost like nobody reading Stuff has a clue how MMP works.
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Rich, I was referring to this statement:
I don't understand a party employing hired guns whose underlying allegiance is to a very different party.
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Oh, I see: It was in relation to:
[Former Green staffer] Morris-Travers was appointed chief of staff in May last year. She was an MP from 1996 to 1999, first with NZ First and then as an independent. She was a minister in the National Party-NZ First coalition.
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