Posts by Angus Robertson
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This is a state with the same GDP per capita as Sweden, but which could not afford to vaccinate its children. That is perverted.
Perverted?
California cut a lot of immunisation programs this year for a saving of USD18 million. Yet California decided to build 54 miles of high speed rail track in the middle of nowhere for USD10 billion. This certainly isn't a spending cap, but the results are similar.
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An open list might also have a negative effect on turnout.
Voter turnout falling - make the process more complicated.
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When Bolger expressed his preference for an upper house back when MMP was first mooted, someone commented that he already had one in the form of the Business Roundtable.
We always had lower house of the the Business Roundtable and the CTU.
MMP gave us an upper house which gets to ratify or block their legislation.
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In terms of amount of power, it does make sense to campaign for the party vote. If they win four electorates and all are overhang (ie, no candidates would qualify via party vote), they're 4 out of 124 MPs. If they win four electorates and win about 3% of the party vote, they're 4 out of 120 MPs.
The Maori Party are all about increasing the influence of Maori in politics. If the Maori electorates split their vote to elect a Maori Party electorate MP, then the Maori roll will always have proportionally more influence than the rest of NZ*.
* except possibly those who live in Epsom and carry out a similar ploy.
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Legal Beagle: Infrequently asked questions, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Okay, thanks. I hadn't thought of the proportional advantage of being explicitly electorate only, so ignored that section. Also such an explicitly devious strategy would, I think, put people off the party/parties like you say.
However without being obvious, this is wrong:
Because this isn’t Italy, and voters would punish them for it. I’d never vote for them again. I’d encourage everyone else to make the same promise. Second, if it did work without annoying everyone, then the other parties would do it at the next election and we’d basically get supplementary member.
The Maori Party encourage voters to back their electorate candidates and place less importance on the party vote. I think it is a brilliant strategy that works well and will ensure that Maori Party remain king-makers until such time as the rest of the electorate catches up.
It doesn't annoy me. It doesn't appear to annoy you either, because I've been reading your blogs for a while now and your condemnation of the Maori Party - not prominent.
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
In other words, nouveau riche ladder-kickers. They’re among the most hypocritical people I’ve ever heard of, even worse than ‘silver spooners’.
There is a general demographic trend which amounts to the same thing - we are getting an older population which lives longer. Any extended funding towards Education must be sourced from cuts to Super or Health. More and more average NZers will not see this as a positive.
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And finally, while it would cause disproportionality, it wouldn’t actually cause overhang (I’ll get to that later).
How much later? It has been 3 days.
I can't figure how a party with more MPs than its proportionality allows can do anything but cause an overhang.
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Question: if you are promoting Odd Futures tour how is the best way to approach GayNZ to induce some free publicity?
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Speaker: Why Auckland, and New Zealand,…, in reply to Sacha,
If only that were true. Govt holds more than just the purse strings.
But they only care about the purse strings. If Auckland wants a rail loop and is willing to pay for it, no central government will get in the way.
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All New Zealand needs Auckland functioning as well as possible, source of 36% of our GDP, so this is truly a project of National Significance.
The flip side of this is pretty obvious we are a city, 31% of the population, of National Significance. If we want to put in a subway we can do it and we can pay and we do not need central government.