Posts by izogi
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Polity: Bridges swims in troubled waters, in reply to tussock,
Hi @tussock.
The only thing National’s doing incorrectly is refusing to publicly state the rules it really operates under. One might suggest that’s because they like winning elections, and lying about that just works better. [--snip--] The trick for making ministers behave is thus voting for the opposition. We were within about 1% of doing it last time, maybe get ’em next time.
Maybe. But even if it did state their rules outright, I think people would vote for it when the likely alternative seems to be worse. Justify it to oneself as changing the rules for improved efficiency, by the way the PM is a multi-millionaire who didn't get what he has by being bound with bureaucratic red tape and clealy knows what he's doing, or whatever you like.
I guess perceptions differ but through the last election my impression was that any number of people were, for whatever reason, just looking for whatever excuses presented themselves to write off and ignore all kinds of crazy messes from the government. Maybe information overload had something to do with it, too. Parts of the MSM were more than happy to analyse all the stuff going on in great detail, but people like John Campbell (that untrustworthy communist extremist, nice justification there) were slapped on the wrist when audiences started getting bored of the same-old lack of government response, and probably switching channels to nice happy faces explaining how everything was really perfectly fine.
It's not like the attitude doens't go both ways, either. Labour was messing up plenty before the '05 election, but I guess it becomes easier for people to come up with excuses to accept that is okay, or fail to even consciously notice it, when the alternative likely to be something headed by Don Brash.
I expect everything that's happened in the past few years will resurface at about the time the opposition parties figure out how to put up something which looks like a viable alternative. By then it'll be easier to look for excuses to dump the government than to keep the status quo, and there are heaps of excuses for anyone wanting them. But the whole viable alternative thing actually needs to happen.
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Polity: Bridges swims in troubled waters, in reply to Sacha,
It matters to me, too, and I appreciate the work that's gone into your investigation, Rob, which is at the very least yet another record of how this government's working.
I think after the last election I'm just resigned to a realisation that stuff like actual genuine integrity and honesty, or lack of it, doesn't affect elections on its own.
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Polity: Bridges swims in troubled waters, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Or do they only care about corruption if they’re missing out on it?
I think people/voters might be more likely to care if they saw an alternative they preferred, and wanted reasons to help justify it. But lately the alternatives haven’t been putting up a very convincing show, so there’s more incentive for voters to look for excuses to write off this type of thing as unimportant. ("They're all corrupt anyway so what's the difference?", and so on.)
Things like the Cabinet Manual and the Bill of Rights possibly need to be given more teeth and independent enforcement than they currently have. They’re important for short and long term integrity of government and lawmaking, but it’s demonstrably easy for any given Cabinet to ignore them, with a few political manoeuvrings, if it’s politically convenient to do so.
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Sadly if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Cabinet Manual, from the past year or so of publicity, it’s that adherence to its rules happen to be about as optional as adherence to something like the Bill of Rights … which is apparently also very optional as soon as it’s deemed politically inconvenient.
To me, whether things have changed or not, the last few years of government have demonstrated that we seriously need to consider options for more binding constraints on lawmakers and Ministers.
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When people in focus groups reported having voted Labour in the past, but reported planning to vote National in 2014, they were often asked: “why have you changed your mind?” In response, issues of unity, backstabbing, in fighting, and so on came up immediately, spontaneously, and repeatedly. Sitting behind the one-way glass listening to that was no fun at all.
I'm on a tangent but by comparison was there much expression of fear of likely coalition partners, like the Green Party and (possibly) NZ First and whoever else?
Much of the anti-Labour/pro-National publicity in the past has seemed to focus on trying to frighten people about this, which I've assumed means that the governing party think there's something there to be set alight.
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National Radio was also covering it earlier today.
I'm having trouble digging up 8 year old coverage on this, but was the main driving motivation for this Order all about transport issues? Most of what I've found (example SAFE press release) seems to blame it on a 2004 Australian shipment where 5000 sheep died, in which case it's just dumb for the government to say "but but but it's legal and therefore okay because they're not slaughtering 'em", at least without arguing that the whole Order is really obsolete and shouldn't have been renewed 18 months ago.
Or was it also about slaughter at the other end?
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Hard News: Campbell interviewed, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
And sadly this is across the whole media scape, not just television.
This morning Fairfax has been making a massive deal about “corporate welfare" courtesy of the Taxpayer’s Union’s latest project, parroting that KiwiRail is a massive drain on taxpayers but without showing any sign that anyone from Fairfax with relevant credentials has actually scrutinised the TU report or figures.
As of a few minutes ago it seems the TU has finally published its report. Judge for yourself.
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Envirologue: Choose Wisely, Grasshopper:…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Only some people get polled. Only some people respond to polls. People only respond to the question being asked in the poll. And most importantly sometimes people ask for one thing but need something different.
I agree. Responding to the populace isn’t usually a bad thing, but ignoring large parts of the populace because they’re unlikely to ever vote for you anyway, if they vote at all? Not necessarily so, and yet that's what I see this government as doing quite a lot of. The government’s meant to be governing for everyone, regardless of who voted it in.
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Envirologue: Choose Wisely, Grasshopper:…, in reply to ,
It’s there method of gaining votes that lost mine.
Hi Steven. What method is that?
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Envirologue: Choose Wisely, Grasshopper:…, in reply to simon g,
The basic fallacy is the notion that the Greens have failed. They haven’t
And, more specifically, that they've failed because they haven't yet been at the Cabinet table, which is a very specific framing of the whole thing that elevates the value of direct power at whatever cost over the value of change towards whatever principles you're wanting.
I'm sure the GP would be more than happy to take seats in Cabinet, but even without that its participation and support base has had a profound influence on changing the policies and actions of other major parties, both Labour and National.