Posts by Steve Withers
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I suspect the $25 was the price of getting the law in at all....and then once in, they lobby the government to lower it - just as they do elsewhere....pushing all the cost onto everyone who ISN'T actually losing a penny due to piracy.
Will this government cave to lobbyists with deep pockets and influential friends? One could be forgiven for thinking: "...by lunchtime..."
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Graeme, you make all the relevant points, so I won’t repeat them. I agree the dual-candidacy rule should remain. Through talking to people about the subject, I’ve come to understand that people opposed to the dual-candidacy rule don’t really understand MMP. Their heads tend – even after 15+ years of MMP – to be firmly stuck in FPP modes of thinking.
I can’t see why any smaller party would waste a single good candidate in any electorate if the rule were to go. It’s my view that the local seats are already the preserve of party hacks from the two major parties.
I’d like to see the local seats done away with altogether for the simple reason the people elected in them now don’t represent me many better than than they did in the bad old days. My local MP is usually completely opposed to much that I support.
There is really no point in my casting my local vote as the seat is a safe one for the party who holds it. I asked on polling day if I was required to cast that vote. The refused to answer my question…which I found annoying. I’ll find out for next time and in all probability I’ll not bother casting a vote in the local seat at all.
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Thirty years of watching politics in New Zealand has taught me many things…and near the top of the list is don’t trust National when they are getting what they want…and promising…somehow, probably, later…..to ’sort something out"….for you.
RED FLAG!
That’s how every scam works. They get theirs now…and later…it’s too late.
You’d think the Maori Party would be onto this after 160 years of it from every government….but apparently not.
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My concern about much of the media I consume today is the selective nature of much of the content. In many cities / towns we have one newspaper and across New Zealand two groups own virtually all of them. While many people do now seek out information online, many more do not. They do things the way they have always done them…and “buy the paper”.
We have seen many examples of media outlets simply ignoring stories they don’t want to talk about. One example that comes readily to mind was the NZ Herald’s virtual blackout on stories supporting climate change in the lead-up to the 2008 elections…while they, almost daily, published stories highlighting the costs of the Emissions Trading Scheme to the public. This imbalance in the information had the effect of making the ETS look like it was all cost and addressing nothing. Meanwhile, climate science stories came and went in other media throughout this period. The NZ Herald re-discovered climate science after the 2008 elections.
The same NZ Herald excludes the TVNZ7 program listings from its television page, presumably to support its editorial position that TVNZ7 should be shut down.
The NZ Herald also used shonky ratings numbers (highlighted by Russell Brown recently) about TVNZ7 viewership to support its editorial line that no one watches TVNZ7 anyway. Attempts to highlight this error have (reportedly) been ignored by the Herald. They can do that with apparent impunity.
These are just a few examples of how “the media” can very much get in the way of the “news"….and be more or less completely unaccountable for it.
I’d like to see the Law Commission look at some process where people can at least lodge and accumulate examples like these and when they reach some critical point the status of the media outlet concerned could be reviewed – mainly as to whether or not they really are serving the public interest as opposed to their own. Maybe there would be no sanction….but they perhaps they could be graded, like restaurants, “A”, “B” or “C” for their journalistic integrity as measured by a set of agreed criteria. The examples I refer to above could be documented for any and all to see and decide for themselves how credible they were.
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We know the owners of big media use their outlets to push their political agendas. The recent purchase of 15% of Fairfax by a billionaire Australian miner for *exactly* this purpose is merely more confirmation of what we already know. I no longer expect the New Zealand to be honest, serious or genuine on anything political where it touches the agenda of their corporate masters.
Thanks for pointing out yet another example of the NZ Herald lying to us all to suit their own agenda.
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I put the NZ government's cheerful - almost gleeful - co-operation in the matter (and apparent prejudice, judging by how the raids were conducted and media releases since) down to the perennial desire to look good to the Americans....the whole free trade deal thing that infests the minds of those in government, whether Labour or National. If we only send our soldiers to die in some shonky invasion or treat some perp like he's guilty until proven innocent....then maybe we'll win El Dorado.
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I'm a Green Party member and have been for 20 years. I very much prefer the Green method of ranking the party list: a postal vote by all current paid up party members. No unions. No delegates. No conferences. Just party members voting directly to rank the list. Perhaps this why I have no issues at all with list MPs. I prefer them. I voted for them before they were elected.
I can readily understand National Party people not liking list MPs. Their party is the least democratic of the three major parties where candidate selection and ranking are concerned. Their party HQ gets t pull 5 people out of it' arse and put them wherever they like on the list. This is how Don Brash got into Parliament. No one in the National party actually voted for him to be there. I've always thought it bizarre that National Party people support a party that does things exactly the way they say they don't like them done. I suspect they don't know...which appears to be a critical requirement for voting for the National Party: their voters not actually knowing much.
Labour felt more like machine politics....often a feature of parties with strong union involvement. Not very accessible and not easily changed.
The Greens are open, democratic and provide a transparent model of how political parties SHOULD operate in an MMP environment.
Yes. Labour needs to be re-founded...and a key part of that is improving dmocracy in that party and making it attractive to join. Why wold anyone join a party where they have no say and are just used to further the interests of others?
They won't.
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The law relating to the electoral referendum looks like it was tailor-made for fiddling the result. The usual Election Day protections (scrutineers) and the multiple-voting protection were done away with….so someone could dump a few thousand marked ballots into the process and who would know?
I frankly do not trust this government to not cheat. They put up the referendum in the first place hoping to ultimately make my vote worthless. I can’t possibly trust anyone who has that black mark as their starting point on electoral systems and associated referenda.
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If the National Party has an outright majority after the election and doesn’t need support from the Maori Party, I am skeptical that Maori TV will not go the same way a TVNZ 7: funding cut.
Why would they keep it around when their are crony pockets at Sky and Mediaworks to fill?
“Tough times, you know….” and “The market, the market…”
The Nats can just use the growing debt their tax cuts have helped to create to justify anything…and their voters lap it all up more or less uncritically (or they wouldn’t be at 50% in the polls in the first place).
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Major arguments for 120 MPs were the hope that any governing body of MPs (be it one party or many) would have a sufficient number of people in it to provide enough competent people to populate any Cabinet…and also a large enough backbench that the executive might have their chain yanked if they became too dictatorial. People who recommended 120 MPs had the Muldoon cabinets very much in mind where the Cabinet was almost the larger part of the governing National Party caucus….and with the usual complement of dead wood, time-servers and faithful retainers.
I’d prefer 150.