Posts by tussock
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Hard News: A call from Curia, in reply to mpledger,
If Curia rings you up wanting info you just have to say No.
Dude, if you want to game the system, there's a lot cleverer things to say than "No". Just imagine being a voter that the centrist National voter would not like, and get them to chase your vote.
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The CGT isn't about house prices. It's not. There's a gigantic hole in our tax system that a lot of people use to not pay any tax at all. National tightened it up a tiny bit in the previous term so it's much harder to count against current income, but there's still bunches of people in New Zealand on very high real incomes pay effectively zero tax.
You make a book loss on your rental properties, you dump money (often subsidised for insulation and such) into them to improve the value, you flip them on for capital gains, and there's no tax because you never make money on anything that's taxable.
A CGT stops that stupid fucking untaxed home-improvement business that every man and his dog is having a go at with yet another new kitchen and so on. Yes, coincidentally, the lack of tax drives up house values, because it's an untaxed investment that the banks will support without limit, but the house prices are a whole 'nother story.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to ,
And it was passed by parliament with conscience votes.
No it wasn't. Both Labour and National whipped the final vote. 113 to 7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_%28Substituted_Section_59%29_Amendment_Act_2007It also destroyed United Future as a political entity, by the by. Big changes around that thing, and still a massive amount of misinformation.
Edit: SNAP.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to BenWilson,
FFS if it were FFP now, Key would have got a two thirds majority.
If it were still FPP, there'd be a ton more city-centre seats with Labour and the Alliance deciding who gets the nod via some arcane rock-paper-scissors methodology, as ACT and National dice the 'burbs, and it's easier for renegades to hold a smaller constituency. 12 Māori seats. Conservative and NZF would split the National vote in semi-rural seats. Totally different game.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Also I don't remember ever seeing any consensus here on PAS about whether the direction of the Labour party was right or wrong.
So, again, asking, what was the Labour party's "direction"? How would the country be substantially different if they'd had a landslide? Other than everyone here being nicer today? In a few words, that people can remember?
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Hard News: Decision 2014: Where to watch…, in reply to mccx,
One media influence I find particularly worrisome is how opinion polling appears to drive voting preference as much as reflect it.
There's a huge bunch of bullshit talked around individual poll results, the media over-play the ups and downs, but the trends are real and have some meaning behind them. They sometimes get out of touch, drift into bias, but the trends stay real and they obviously corrected for bias well this time through. You just can't randomly ring up a thousand people over and over again and keep getting incorrect answers.
One thing they've been hearing for the last 18 months is more and more Labour voters (and a few Greens) becoming "undecided". National's steady rise in the polls from mid-2013 to mid-2014 reflected a real change in the electorate.
A big crowd of those people picked New Zealand First. A good few went back to Labour. A lot went to the Conservatives. Most of them probably stayed home. That's who those people are, socially conservative, authoritarian, centre-left voters. The ones who really do think those spies are obviously only attacking criminals and they have nothing to hide.
Secretly, the ones Labour lost with the section 59 repeal, because they're still hitting their kids for Jesus. Even though National voted for it, and those people aren't stupid and won't vote National either. It's probably a conversation Labour needs to have, in public, that they don't think those people are criminals, and respect the love they have for their kids, that the law was just to stop a few really bad people from hurting their kids very badly, which it has. -
Hard News: Decision 2014: Where to watch…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But at the same time they gave their party vote to National.
There's a lot of people in every seat vote for a Red candidate and the Blue party, or a Blue candidate and the Red party. Believe it or not, sometimes people who like one party also like a person from the other party.
Clear your confusion: it's not Goff voters voting National, it's National voters voting Goff. Because they like him. Just that simple. The problem is there's not enough Labour voters, not who it is puts Goff in each time.
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Hard News: Decision 2014: Where to watch…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The relationship with The Greens was toxic to Labour, too many people I spoke with were simply afraid to vote Labour. Rightly or wrongly they perceived The Greens as dangerous to NZs economy.
Uh, you're talking to National party voters? That's their attack ad. "NZ CAN'T AFFORD A LABOUR/GREENS GOVERNMENT". Lies and more lies, but they speak them with a clear voice.
Labour has a very simple counter to that every time: Party vote Labour is less seats for the Greens, and a better chance to pass policy without them.
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There's not half a million informal votes sitting around is there? They all get a second and third look before the final count. Seems it was just another in the long trend of lower turnouts though.
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They did not welcome or trust the change Labour was offering.
True. What was that change, by the way? Off the top of your head? Non-specific answers involving "change" and "not like National" aren't valid, you know. The messaging, I didn't hear it.
If I was to get snarky (heavens forfend), I'd point out that "vote positive" worked out pretty well for National's highly positive campaign slogans, as against Labour's kinda mealy ones. Kept the team that's working, eh.