Posts by Mikaere Curtis
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Our implementation of MMP has created a powerful DISINCENTIVE for parties to encourage broadbased membership, since in doing so all that would happen is the power of the elite party cadres would be diluted. By keeping membership at a minimum the party cadre is able to easily manipulate the all-powerful list to produce outcomes that often more serve the internal jockying of political courtiers than reflect the desires of the party membership or the the wishes of the wider electorate.
Can you name the parties in which the membership have a direct influence on the ranking of their party's list ? Labour have some three dozen strong cabal to do their list ranking process. If I understand correctly, ACT set their list via their Board, I have no idea how National do it (but would be surprised if it was even remotely democratic relevant to their wider membership). Last I heard, the Maori Party had some kind of multitiered approach.
AFAIK, only the Greens have implemented a grass-roots list ranking process - and this was not because our the way MMP has been implemented, it is because this is the fairest way to ensure each member has a say on the list rankings (or not, if they wish).
As for your idea of forcing political parties to 15-20,000 in membership in order to register - that's possible even worse for democracy that re-introducing FPP.
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The only reason the Greens ever won Coromandel was because Labour backed Jeanette Fitzsimons. This was a smart move by Helen Clark, not dissimlar to National's arrangement with ACT in Epsom. At the time, the Greens were not guaranteed to get the 5% threshhold (the actual result was 5.16%), so it made sense for Labour to accommodate the Greens at that time.
Since then, the strategy has been to stand candidates in electorates to gain a platform from which to pitch for the party vote.
This isn't because the Greens don't see any value in the role of an electorate MP; it is a pragmatic decision based on how the party actually secures Green MPs. Campaigning for the party vote actually gets our candidates into parliament. Targetting resources at a specific candidate campaign (an against parties who are able to draw on far higher funding when generating a response) is seen as high risk. I'm not sure why we should risk our parliamentary presence on this basis.
The other side of the coin is that MPs tend to have a public profile, and therefore tend to spend party of their time campaigning for the party vote on a national level. Therefore, the opportunity cost is even higher if a sitting MP were to focus on an electorate.
As long as we have FPP electorate voting, I don't see the above situation changing.
Disclosure: I am the Green candidate for Tamaki Makaurau.
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In 1987 my father was principal of Hato Petera College on the North Shore. Although only a small school (circa 230 pupils), it had six rugby fields so was a natural choice for some of the smaller nations to choose for rugby practice.
Back in the day, you didn’t get hoards of fans descending on a practice session, and one day there were about four teams practicing. I can’t remember all of the teams, but one was definitely Romania (good to see them back down here, BTW). The principal’s house backed onto the lower fields, so we turned the couch around, opened the ranch slider, and watched them all practice. It was cool to be so close.
After the tournament, my brother was buying a bag at a bag shop in Queen St. A couple of members of the Pumas were in the shop and also in a quandary – they’d run out of money and needed to sell some gear. He bartered with one and purchased a team kit bag and an actual test jersey (signed by the erstwhile owner). Number 13 IIRC, and I think he still has it somewhere.
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Perhaps. But when I was 18, (some moons before you, O! best beloved), we could usually sneak into a pub or buy from the bottle store. And when I was 16, we could get someone that was 18 to go for us. I first got seriously smashed at 16 and regularly thereafter. I can see the same pattern repeating at a lower age.
As Craig points out, enforcing the law is the key to creating a culture of alcohol retailers taking a hard line on who gets into the pub, or purchases from the off-licence. It was not until the late 90s that drivers licences (the standard form of identification) had a photo, so until then they could be lent to others with both impunity and success. Grabbing your older sibling's licence is an order of magnitude easier to do than creating a passable fake photo-id, so I really think the problem here is the enforcement regime as opposed to potential ways to circumvent it.
Like Russell, I would like to see a proper framework that allows adults to choose recreational substances other than alcohol if they want to have a good night out (and stay up late).
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I do remain strongly of the view that suburban dairies are not the place for this product to be sold, and certainly not with large point of sale displays.
I recently spent 10 mins waiting for takeaways at a suburban stripmall, so had a bit of time to take in my surroundings. The dairy had all available windowspace covered in ads for Kronic* and other drugs. When accessability is this high, the surface area for potential problems increases; as Chris Fowlie says, it clearly needs to be moved into specialist shops.
That being said, I'm a lot more exercised about reports from friends around their 13 year-old daughters getting invited to parties of other kids in the same age group where the parents holding the party are supplying the kids with alcohol. I mean, a party of 16 year-olds and I can see the argument - but 13 ? FFS, nothing good will come of that.
* My mates tried it - they said it was like cabbage, and couldn't see the point.
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Southerly: One Hundred and Thirty-one…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Excellent post, David. When my wife lived in Christchurch, she used to ride everywhere. So nice not to have hills to worry about.
I just nipped up Mt Albert, which is a really excellent way to get up a sweat without having to ride too far from home.
I love that ride and, since I live in Morningside, I get to include the Roy Clements Treeway on my way home :)
Just started a job in Fanshawe St, and am in the process of identifying the least-risky way to get here. Assuming I take the Northwestern Cycleway, how bad is the traffic once I get to Newton Road. I think nipping through Western Park and then heading past the Birdcage and around Victoria Park is the safest way to go - but open to suggestions.
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And at the same time, they're squashing public service salaries by requiring departments to fund superannuation out of their budgets with no increase.
Is this same spending cap being applied to MP's (in comparison, extremely generous) superannuation funding ?
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I fail to see why harm reduction works with other drugs but not with ‘P’.
P is extremely addictive, and in my experience, only the most experienced users are able to use it casually without developing a dependency. It also doesn't have major hallucenogenic qualities - it won't freak you out in terms of sensory perception. This means that people who stay away from LSD can happily use P i.e. it has significanlty lower barriers to entry than LSD or magic mushrooms, so is accessible to a much wider cross section of the community (hence the large damage footprint).
P is a drug of choice for criminal elements because it is profitable and suits their not-in-fulltime-employment lifestyle. Other drugs can mesh with a fulltime employment/studying lifestyle but being up all night 3 nights in a row is not consonant with turning up for work on a Monday morning. You won't change this dynamic by making P more accessible, cheaper and decrimalised.
In other words, P is dangerous to most who use it and should not be considered on a par with MDMA, LSD, THC and other substances in terms of capacity of harm minimisation.
The minimisation strategy for P is substitution - such as MDMA.
Once upon a time, IIRC, New Zealand enjoyed the distinction of being the only country that had LSD as the next most popular recreational substance after cannabis. Perhaps that says something about our national psyche...
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The problem with that approach is that there will be some who do themselves harm. In the society I want to live in we will care for them within the public health system. Personally I’d like some of the cost of that care paid for by the user in the form of taxes or duties. Tax and duty also allows a reasonably easy way of moderating use – again for tobacco increasing the cost to the user is the single most effective way of reducing use. If you make it illegal to sell you lose that tool.
The problem with the "commercialise, tax and (hopefully) cover the social costs" approach is that the commercialisation is often a major driver of the social costs e.g. alcohol, tobacco, pokies*.
Allowing a commercialised distribution of known problematic substances increases the overall negative outcomes because businesses have a habit of promoting their products with a view to expanding their use i.e. more use of problematic substances = more problems.
I prefer the ACC (socialised insurance) approach to dealing with the harms from drug use. Just like rugby or netball, you can deal with the harm outcomes by spreading the cost across the wider community; you don't need to tax each netball or rugby player individually.
* I include pokies in this because, the important part is the substance that interacts with the receptors in your brain - not the delivery mechanism or catalyst.
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I’d imagine a situation where drugs were graded on their health risk and labelled accordingly. Sale of those drugs would be subject to taxation, duties and regulation.
I'm not so inclined to consider caveat emptor to be a sufficient mechanism to prevent harm. For substances that, when used responsibly, usually have minimal harm, then sure. But for substances like tobacco (and pokies, for that matter), all the warnings in the world can't help you once you are addicted. For this kind of drug, you need to deal with the drivers of updake - which means the nearly ubiquitous nature of tobacco supply in our community. I would prefer to see it illegal to sell or import for supply, but legal to possess and legal to grow.
It's not just about decrminialisation/legalisation, its also about understanding the role of legal supply and whether that promotes irresponsible behaviour. And I'd like to see controls around promotion as well.
My current view is that if we had some well-understood and comparatively low-risk, reasonably-priced legal options available (e.g. MDMA) then we could deal with the troublesome drug use (alcohol, P etc) because people will use an alternative if it does the job (having a good time, staying up late).
Use of those drugs would be restricted to non-public places, essentially the same as you see for tobacco now.
Actually, public spaces is exactly where smokers congregate nowadays. It's quite a problem because their butts tend to end up in stormwater drains and hence the local marine environment. I don't like the idea of something as poisonous as nicotine building up in our marine environment, unintended consequences and all that.