Posts by izogi
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: The new establishment, in reply to Bart Janssen,
National is unashamedly ideology driven. [...] Would The Greens and Labour actually be any different? Well, they say they will be ...
I don't at all wish to defend the current government, which I don't especially like for many reasons, but a related issue is our general culture of punishing leaders who acknowledge they might have been wrong, or change their mind.
If you fail to commit to some kind of ideology from the outset, it's treated as a weakness. If you fail to stick to it in the face of reasonable arguments to the contrary, it means you got it wrong and it's treated as a weakness, and so leaders tend to be afraid to diverge from their stated ideology. If they do it has to be dressed up to appear as if they're not doing that at all.
-
Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Emma Hart,
The thing about the underlying ethos of the Electoral Commission is that they want to make it as easy as possible for people to vote. They have zero interest in making life difficult for people whose living situations are fluid or difficult or unusual
This even shows up in the legislation if reading between the lines. The best example I can think of is section 82 which mandates that it's compulsory to enrol if eligible. But 82(6) then states that anyone who applies for registration is not liable for prosecution. ie. If you're found to be breaking the law, you can simply register and not be prosecuted. The law only cares about people who consciously continue to break it after being "reminded".
-
Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Henry Barnard,
I assumed the 'personal reasons' clause was more for making legally-required enrolment possible for those whose situation is something like "I'm homeless and transient and have to say I live somewhere even though it's impossible to place", but you might be right. My opinion's worthless in comparison with someone familiar with how this actually gets legally interpreted, though.
-
Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Alastair Thompson,
Under MMP it matters not a jot in any event and under FPP it arguably mattered even less.
Wouldn't it often matter more under FPP? A dissenting FPP vote in a safe electorate is virtually worthless, but shift it to an electorate that might go multiple ways and that vote suddenly becomes more valuable. Given the circumstances it seems unlikely that would have had anything to do with Turei's reason, though.
-
Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Russell Brown,
I really hope that's the case.
If I read it right, Metiria also never ruled out potentially being a Minister in future. She merely ruled out seeking it.
-
Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Emma Hart,
"NZ law is fairly flexible around *where* people enrol. As long as they only enrol, vote once, all is good."
Thanks for that. I'm still trying to understand this in the context of the Electoral Act, though. 83(2)(c) says you're required to provide your place of residence "in respect of which registration is claimed". Earlier, section 72 has a heap of rules about determining a person's place of residence. I'll submit to legal expertise and may have mis-read, but I cannot see where the flexibility is. 72 says your place of residence is where you make your home for family or personal relations, or for domestic or personal reasons. Section 83 then says you have to provide that place of residence when you register.
To be honest the whole thing seems like a storm in a teacup to me given the circumstances. The circumstances imply there was no serious intent to manipulate the system or vote multiple times or anything. Meanwhile, I can see who she is and what she's doing, who for, and which values she's standing up for in modern times. It doesn't bother me personally to see her as an MP and I think it'd be a loss if she had to go over this.
It's hard to deny that she did it, though, and then it becomes a political thing. Logical comparisons with anything else be damned. Politics is both cruel and polarised right now.
-
Hard News: Metiria's Problem, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Has someone raised the idea that perhaps Turei was tipped off that enemies were going to spill the beans about her 'past', and she chose/was advised to 'confess' and try and extract a bit of political mileage in the process? Dark, dirty politics.
Are you sure you'd not be jumping to conclusions? I'm all for getting annoyed at Dirty Politics stuff which I find generally distressing, but so far I can't see any obvious evidence of that here. If Turei had been blackmailed somehow into acknowledging this, she doesn't seem to have given any indication.
To me it seems far more likely that she just chose to talk about her past because it was in line with the Green Party message, possibly not fully considering the consequences. She probably thought she remembered everything well enough, and didn't expect consequences beyond a grilling from WINZ and paying things back.
The electoral fraud stuff probably came completely unexpected, but if you're an investigator trying to forensically confirm where a person was living to identify what they were entitled to, reviewing the electoral roll makes complete sense and it's most likely standard practice. So suddenly the whole thing looks much more messy than was ever considered.
-
Yikes. The website overhaul leaps out. http://www.labour.org.nz/ (Front splash page that seeks donations only at this point, it seems. Click through and it's still talking about fresh approaches.)
Is it meant to pause for a couple of seconds with nothing visible but Jacinda's giant face, or is that just my sub-fibre VDSL connection speed slowing the loading?
-
Hard News: That escalated quickly ..., in reply to Shaun Scott,
One person said they have not voted In the past two elections, that they weren't impressed with "the young one" but thought "that kelvin seems pretty good" and say they are likely to vote this time as a result.
Did they indicate anything about what she'd need to do to earn their respect? Like punch someone in the face, or something?
-
I guess my original thought about this wasn't so much to do with whether or not it's appropriate to ask a prospective PM that question. Not to say that discrimination isn't important, as are a million other things, but it's more a problem that we're now all spending so much time talking about it.
If media and public can spend days on end fawning and arguing about this, it just fills up the narrative with random people's thoughts about Labour and eclipses whatever other issues Labour would probably rather be talking about. That's part of the trap that Labour's been falling into in the past.
I was impressed with how rapidly and maturely Jacinda Ardern was able to smother that discussion when confronted, instead of fanning it, but it still didn't stop everyone else from wanting to express and scream their opinions on something that, whilst important, probably isn't intended to be a core message for the campaign. People who want Labour to be successful should hope that Labour can take hold of the conversation about itself again in coming days. If it can't control it then everything's up in the air again.