Posts by Kyle Matthews
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I would be happy with parliament enacting this, with two concerns:
1. That the electoral commission considered the reality of politics in amongst its reasoning for making certain choices.
2. That parliament might not accept their recommendations.If those weren't true, I'd be completely fine with parliament making the change - the lack of #2 in particular means that they aren't looking after themselves.
In principle, I don't see any need for a referendum for relatively minor changes to electoral law, any more than umpteen other parts of electoral law (and electoral finance law) which have changed over the past couple of decades.
-
amerika
Whoa! Retro.
I was disappointed not to see ameriKKKa myself.
-
We all know these crimes are massively under reported, and convictions rates are low… Maybe being caught and doing a program reduces your re-offending, or maybe re-offending just isnt being detected?
It's not a comparison with non-offenders. It's a comparison between offenders who did the programme, and offenders who didn't. So the under-reporting works for both of them. We can draw a strong conclusion from the relative difference in recidivism that the programme actually works reasonably well.
This is the bit that gets me, why should the victims need protecting from public knowledge? they are victims. I find it quite sickening that society still treats the victims of sexual assault as if there were a stigma attached to being a victim and that, in some way, the victim is responsible for their own suffering..
The law doesn't prevent the victim talking about their experience with people and doesn't cover up the abuse.
It provides name suppression to the victim, and the offender, to protect the victim. Imagine an eight year old child returning to school after being sexually abused. That would be hard enough without half the kids in your class knowing that you'd been abused.
It also protects these victims from being groomed by other criminals. Making their name available is going to put a target on them.
You can make a good argument for victims, once adults, being able to make their own choice about the lifting of suppression so they can speak out. When they're children? C'mon.
-
Labour wins again for one term in 1984 with a New Zealand Party coalition.
Can't see that happening. Despite Labour turning hard right, on election night they were still in theory pretty left wing - election policies etc. Can't pick NZ Party going with them until Douglas started to fire up.
-
John Hartevelt went to school a million years ago.
He was in high school after 2000 I believe. Completed an honours degree mid-2000s.
-
I’m feeling like getting rid of the overhang altogether is probably a bad move… surely a cap of 121 (or just outright lifting the number of MPs to 121) would be a better idea – same number required for a majority, while keeping ever so much more proportionality and giving the parties one more MP to form a government with…
Shouldn't we have an odd number of MPs now that the speaker can vote? If we stick to 120 MPs by getting rid of the overhang, you actually need a majority of two to form a government (or someone to abstain).
-
Because no OIA is going to tell you how those students are really doing. How they’re getting on with classmates, or contributing in class, or stood up to do that really brave thing, they’d never done before. That conversation is one that’s shared with parents on a regular basis, if you’re an engaged parent, who works hard to form a relationship with your child’s teacher.
+1.
Regardless, I can't get up in arms with Fairfax for requesting (and presumably publishing) the information. No it's not useful, in fact it's potentially damaging, but it's stupid information that the government requested, so of course the public has the right to see it. If the government hadn't pushed it through under urgency (and given a shit about what everyone said about what they were doing), perhaps they might have done it a little better.
-
To my mind Hall needs a prison sentence – I don’t feel home detention will help him in the long term.
How on earth would putting him in prison for a year help him? There's not a lot of good parenting models there.
The only possible reason for a punishment model which makes any sense (if you buy into it - I don't particularly), is that it makes the victims feel better. In the case of a baby there's not the required consciousness to feel better than the criminal has been put behind bars. Best thing for both of them is for him to learn to become a better parent, because he's likely to have that role to some extent for a long time to come.
-
Knowing that there would be a hullabaloo if she won gold in the 800m, Semenya intentionally tanked and got silver. Still very respectable but she misses out on the inevitable bullshit that would come her way if she won gold.
That was an interesting race to watch. She was mowing through the field down the home straight, from a long way back. And then when she finished she didn't look tired like all the other competitors. If she'd started her charge 10 seconds earlier...?
-
He has refused all treatment. He cannot be compelled to be treated for his issues, so all we can do is try to keep him out of society for as long as possible.
This is what I don't like about our corrections system - we've defined crimes in a table of how much we need to punish people based on what they've done. Wilson did 21 years worth of harm according to a judge, so that's what he gets.
If the system was defined by rehabilitation and by preventing crime by those that come into it, some people might be out a lot earlier, and contribute to society, and Wilson might be there for another 40 years, released only when he's no longer a risk to others.