Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Hard News: The Solemnity of the Day, in reply to izogi,
I thought the Green Party took my aussie postal address from the electoral roll.
Are overseas mailing addresses *on* the electoral role? Genuine question. Wouldn't think they'd bother with me since people who move long-term to America are probably not on their list of likely voters, but I had no idea.
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Hard News: The Solemnity of the Day, in reply to izogi,
It’s my first time stuck outside NZ during an election and it feels isolated over here.
I feel miffed that the Green Party was the only one that tried to chase me for a vote. Did anyone else overseas hear anything direct from any other parties? :P
I hear ya. We're making our American friends stay up to watch the election results with us. It's really odd to care so much about something and know that no-one else around you is even aware it's happening.
I think my Labour membership has lapsed, but I've certainly got a lot of email from them about how to vote and that I can vote. Haven't heard from anyone else - but then, none of them have my email or address, so I wouldn't expect to, and would be a bit miffed if they'd managed to get their hands on them.
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Hard News: The Solemnity of the Day, in reply to izogi,
It turns out that after printing the form (I don’t own a printer) I’d need to either fax the forms (I don’t own a fax), or put the various forms into three separate envelopes (only a coincidence I actually own any envelopes), then either post it to arrive before Friday (I don’t own any stamps so that’d have been a hassle) or drop it into one of two posts in all of Victoria.
C'mon, though, they're pretty much giving you all the options they can. (And when you download the voting papers, the due dates are given pretty prominently in the instructions, and also on the website.) You can also *post* it to your local consulate, which is the option we picked.
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Hard News: The Solemnity of the Day, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Seriously, what’s the argument against fixing the election date on (say) the Saturday after the third Friday in November? The only exception being the Government losing confidence or supply, in which case the election is held at a time determined by statute NOT the strategic convenience of the Prime Minister.
Seems sensible to me. America's fixed voting day works very well in all respects except that it's a Tuesday, which is basically a slap in the face of the working poor. A public holiday and/or weekend day works much better.
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OnPoint: Brain Drain Et Cetera, in reply to Kumara Republic,
As Tom Beard noted in an old blog post, NZ largely went from ‘rurality to suburbia without the urbanity in between’. There's a world of difference between a city and an overgrown small town, if they have the same populations.
I've solved the long-term temptations of overseas urban living by moving to semi-rural America. The bright lights of Wellington are going to seem pretty damn bright when I get back, believe me.
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OnPoint: Brain Drain Et Cetera, in reply to merc,
So we bailed too big to fail companies, why don't we bail student loans?
You can't assume people are only going overseas because of student loans. Leaving aside the whole issue - which is one I do feel strongly needs fixing - and speaking as a university-educated person in her twenties who left the country last year, I did it because, basically, New Zealand is small and the world is large. I could have gone on to postgraduate education at home but it would have limited my options severely.
Young, educated people are always going to leave New Zealand. We are a country of four million people at the back end of nowhere. I love NZ, and I'm coming home when I'm done, but frankly if you have the opportunity to live overseas for at least a year or two you'd be crazy not to.
The real question is: how do you make them want to come back? I still feel that, in the long-term, aside from the emotional ties, New Zealand is my best option for living the majority of my life. That's the feeling you want to inspire in people. Whether they leave temporarily is not important. Whether they return long-term is. And, important though student loans are, they are only one factor influencing that decision.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I wouldn’t vote for Jim if the other candidates were Don Brash, Peter Dunne and George W Bush. Just sayin.
(ok, maybe if his only opponent was Lhaws. Think I’d go skiing on election day in that circumstance).
Which is of course your right and privilege, but I don't think it's a big secret that it's not how left-leaning - Labour or not - voters in Wigram felt about it. We weren't exactly holding our noses - it was more that the Labour candidate was just so goddamn nice it seemed a shame to vote-split on her.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I wouldn’t know — I wasn’t there yet! But yeah, there was a fair bit of pragmatism (to put it mildly) floating around Wigram, and the mayoral election certainly showed that Labour’s quite happy to work with Jim.
Weren't you? I'd totally forgotten. But let me put it this way: when I walked into the Young Labour election party that evening I said "Okay, hands up, who voted for Jim?" and every person in the room who lived in Wigram put their hand up. We did the volunteer hours for Labour, but we weren't taking any chances. (We also all felt kind of guilty about it.)
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Labour have never gifted Jim a seat the way National have Act, and in fact pointedly didn’t keep the Alliance alive in ’02.
You can't say the tone on the ground in Wigram wasn't, er, somewhat more pragmatic in 2008. On the other hand, we were actually actively working to promote the Labour candidate, so there's that. On the third hand, I still voted for Jim and told all my flatmates to as well.
But you're absolutely right that there wasn't an institutional attempt to hand him the seat or even a suggestion that we should, it was a much more individual people reading the political weather sort of thing.
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Hard News: Criminalising Journalism, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
Perhaps if the NZ news media had been a little less supine and a little more willing to critique "nice guy John" back in 2007 and 2008, they wouldn't be in this position now. Bullies can't function without enablers, after all.
Key's, er, key trait seems to be a desire to be liked, by everyone - except people he can dismiss as irrelevant. By pushing this, the media have put themselves in the group of people who maybe don't like him - but they can't be dismissed as irrelevant. They convey his message. He needs them to like him. Hence, meltdown.