Posts by Kyle Matthews
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And many were forced to retire because 65 was the limit.
That's been tested and proven to be illegal for quite a few years now. Only lack of ability to do the job can force you out of your job now I believe.
It seems to me that the only likely problems from this law are if National gets another term. Labour can just repeal the law. National would strike a political problem in doing so, having put it through three years earlier, so they might be stuck with it.
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It is a limited subset of the ‘orginal’ Pixietown, basically bits that were in good working condition when it came to the Early Settlers. There is a gold coin donation for restoration (or at least has been in past years, we haven’t been this season yet).
Presumably not this year, with the settlers museum closed for refurbishment?
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You have a better chance of reaching people who haven’t voted for you before, because they’re more likely to share your values than agree with you on every point of policy.
That's quite insightful Isaac.
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I imagine it depends whether you're talking about child support for otherwise working parents or the DPB - they are different things, right?
The government doesn't recover anything when its a working parent, only when it's on the DPB.
divide that by 121 to get: 18,655
You don't divide each list seat evenly. The Sainte Laguë method means that the first list seat is much easier to get than that. The first one kicks in at about 0.6% of the vote, the second at about 1.4%?
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The state recover all those costs from father of the child unless they’re low-wage or unemployed, in which case the state would be paying for the kids even if they were together.
No they don't. Off the top of my head, you have to earn over $100K as a paying parent in child support in order to completely pay for the DPB of the other parent. The vast majority of people, including people who have relatively high incomes, only pay for the portion of the government support.
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That’s a feature. If you don’t care, then you vote for a party and accept their choice of list. You had the option to express and opinion and didn’t take it.
My feeling is that not many voters will bother to rank the party list, so it will stay largely the same as it would have otherwise.
And I don't believe that you should encourage people to engage in democratic processes which don't change reality. Democracy works best when there is feedback, rather than your involvement having no impact at all.
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But won't they just pick some future star who's a likely for the next election, but didn't make the list cut this year, and make them do it?
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Like Richard, I find the whole voting process so special. Always try and walk to the polling booth (about 10 minutes) to mull over any last thoughts (mine were Green vs Mana, but I stuck with Green). You can see couples and families and individuals making their way there, all to participate in the same great story with the unknown ending.
The funny woman with a Labour rosette who dashed over to write down some number over the guy's shoulder. There's an army of people who are members of political parties that I'd never know, and they all come out on one day to do these great little jobs - nosey people at the polling booths, people with cars helping the elderly to vote, someone else setting up for the 7pm party, half of which will be the worst parties in the world. Seriously, burnt sausage rolls and downturned faces at practically every Labour and Act party on Saturday night.
And then we avoided TV3 coverage because of Henry, and so caught TVNZ's comedy of technical errors - cutting live to reporters who couldn't hear them, putting up results from one electorate while talking about another, letting David Farrar sit down in front of a camera.
The result was awful, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the day. Lets do it again!
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Finally, I’ll see your Sienna Miller and raise you one Brad Guildford
Brad must be his drunken name.
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It’s false electoral maths too. Because the Maori Party might switch sides if a viable coalition could be formed. Peter Dunne can always be relied upon to switch sides. That’s why it’s such a rush for the Nats to get these guys their pork.
A viable coalition from Mana, Greens, Labour, NZ First, and Maori Party? You're kidding right?
John Key knows he can form the coalition he's working on at the moment because it's the same coalition he had for three years, and they've all met with him and signed up already. There's no way NZ First and Maori Party are going to coalition with Mana and the Greens.