Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Could we perhaps start a penny-pinching gone mad meme?
Nothing wrong with watching the pennies, but there's such a thing as "penny wise and pound foolish". Perhaps I'm too simple for Wellywood, but it seems a no-brainer that when you give someone a job (and a raft of statutory obligations) you must properly staff and resource them to do it.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Now that would be awesome!
Funny how many people in Europe and Asia manage it as a matter of necessity. When at high school I was drop-dead impressed by an exchange student who was Italian, but her mother was Franco-German. Since neither set of grandparents spoke a word of Italian she also picked up two other languages. And pretty impressive English somewhere along the line, but I'll be damned where she found the time.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Russell Brown,
The Speaker is the responsible minister and Lockwood Smith is the minister.
Yes, I do get that Russell. One might also think when you're a member of body whose sole function is to advise you'd not only do so but be proactive about identifying issues that lie outside your able-bodied male comfort zone. Wasn't exactly a state secret that the Greens were likely to have a profoundly deaf MP in the next Parliament. No, Brownlee and Shearer couldn't call meetings of the PSC. But it seems to me they could easily have reached out to the Greens, identified issues and been stronger advocates than seems to be the case.
Would Smith have made such a knob of himself if the PSC had been aware of the note-taker issue, taking soundings and advised Mr Speaker there was no opposition to them being funded out of the Clerk's Office appropriation? Who knows, but maybe not.
You said this:
When Mojo Mathers was declared an MP, I greeted it as a further step on the way to a Parliament that looked more like New Zealand, in its glorious variety: one day we’d have an MP who was on the autism spectrum, and out about it. That would probably require a different sort of support – perhaps a “quiet room” adjacent to the Chamber, for use at short notice. There might be some cost, or inconvenience, in making that room available. But it would be what we would do.
Totally agree with you. But if Jimmy or Leo went into politics, I really hope they'd get the support they need without having to go through the same kind of nonsense Mojo Mathers has. To be a Pollyanna for a moment, let's just hope a few pols - not just Smith - have gotten a wake up call about owning their privilege and remembering Parliament is a House of Representatives for everyone not just white upper-middle-class able-bodied straight men.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to nzlemming,
Lockwood’s the Chair. He can’t duck the responsibility and you can’t duck it for him.
Mark: This is me not going ballistic. Take a picture. You might, however, want to stick to direct quotes if you can’t paraphrase me more accurately. .
Shearer was new at his job and Gerry was apparently busy in Chch.
And both could have made the time if it actually mattered to them. I honestly don’t see what’s so damn controversial about that – because (yes) I think the real teachable moment here is what unthinking ableist privilege looks like and how little forethought could have avoided it. Since the Parliamentary Services Commission’s entire reason for existence is to “advise the Speaker about the services to be provided to the House of Representatives and to members of Parliament” I think they can all be fairly asked why Mathers was failed so badly.
(And something else I think Smith can be fairly pinged for – a pretty standard case study in privilege-denying dude-ism. Because, yeah, this is really all about YOU and your hurt feeling. Not helped by a deeply entrenched political culture where nutting-up and saying, “OK, I might be wrong on this…” is pretty much automatically derided as weakness and changing a position snarked as “flip-flopping”.)
Not as entertaining as “evil Tory fucking over a disabled Greenie out of partisan malice”, I grant you, but it bugs me.
I’d like to think that if my partial hearing loss gets any worse, I won’t have to put up with this kind of nonsense from future employers. It’s such a needless waste of time and energy over what is, in context, petty cash. (And as Russell pointed out in his OP, a modest spend with a potentially impressive cost-benefit ratio.)
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Did you have to go ballistic?
Yes. You might want to go back and re-read the “cheap shot” I referred to and which you (kind of) sprang to the defense of. I’ll tick off Smith for being bullheaded, intransigent and infuriatingly obtuse.
Idiot Savant has convincingly (to my mind) fisked Smith’s procedural defense as essentially bullshit.
But implying this issue wouldn’t have arisen if Mathers was a National MP? Think about the role of the Speaker, and tell me that’s not a line that should be crossed with extreme care. And a hell of a lot more evidence than is on the table.
Needless to say, if any such evidence does come to light I'll show you what what a full spread of rhetorical ICBMs look like when I turn them on Smith. Speakers showing partisan malice towards any non-Government MPs should be named, shamed and removed from their office with extreme prejudice. Or I'll want to know why not. :)
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to nzlemming,
So really, we’re back to Lockwit, aren’t we? Did he convene the PSC to discuss this matter?
As far as I'm aware, the PSC's current membership is the Leaders of the House and Opposition. Whatever your views of the abilities of Messers Brownlee and Shearer, I believe they're entirely capable of picking up the phone and arranging meetings if they're so inclined.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Bart Janssen,
However it would be nice if the National Party actually spoke up about how outrageous this is. Their silence makes them an obvious target.
So say that then. Might also be useful to draw a non-trivial distinction between National and the fucking Speaker of the House because accusing any Speaker of spite-fucking non-Government MPs is pretty serious. At least it was when Margaret Wilson couldn't open her mouth without driving Matthew Hooten insane.
But, hell, that’s one brick wall I can’t be bothered banging my head against anymore.
Yes, Lockwood has half-a-point that he can’t just pull money out of his arse – at least I hope he can’t. That’s not really the issue for me. As far as I can tell this is not outside the terms of the specific appropriation for the Office of the Clerk -- which is responsible for providing secretarial services to the House. Nor would it have been particularly difficult for the three members of the Parliamentary Services Commission (including the Leader of the Opposition, FWIW) to meet and authorize the expenditure quickly and painlessly before Christmas if they could have been arsed. Mathers hardly kept her profound hearing loss a secret, and it was apparent fairly early in the campaign that the odds of her getting into Parliament were high.
Really, I think that’s more than enough to go on with without spinning off into another demented Evil Tory conspiracy theory.
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Hard News: This Is Not A Complicated Issue, in reply to Gareth Davidson,
There is an easy solution available to her – defect to the National Party (temporarily, of course). Problem will be fixed within days, if not hours, I’m sure.
Nice cheap shot there (and not exactly a tough audience), but I think there's more than enough to justly ping The Speaker for without going there.
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I’ve noted elsewhere that when Parliament was refurbished in the 90’s, induction loops were installed in the Debating Chamber and Gallery without undue trauma or sending the nation into the arms of the IMF.
Funny what a little bit for forward planning and grown-up non-fuckery can do, isn’t it?
Another little factoid the Kiwi-buggers seem to have problems wrapping their heads around: Mojo Mathers is a legitimate and duly elected Member of Parliament. It was pretty obvious early in the campaign that there were better than even odds a profoundly deaf MP would be returned to the next Parliament.
Was this really totally out of the blue, Mister Speaker? And as Idiot Savant has noted with (IMO justified asperity) how hard would it have been to get David Shearer and Gerry Brownlee (i.e. the other two members of the Parliamentary Services Commission) in a room before Christmas and sort it? After all, it took three days not three months and counting for Parliament to pass legislation under extreme urgency to avoid a by-election. A relatively minor expenditure to allow an MP to do her frigging job should be a doddle.
ETA: I'm going to have to track down one of the more deligtfully daffy British arguments against women's suffrage. You let them vote, then you're going to end up with women MPs - and the completely unjustifiable drain on the public purse of providing them with *cough* "facilities". Really.
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to papango,
But I’m not convinced that increasing charges would be good for transparency.
No it won't, and here it's to the credit of the Ombudsmen's Office that there's been some pointed throat-clearing and eyebrow twitching over departments presenting large invoices for staff time, collation and photocopying. :) The Act could do with a tune-up on that score, I suspect, because it's more lack of consistency and (perhaps) a little more ambiguity in the law than is ideal rather than Sir Humphrey-esque use-pays malice. :)
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