Posts by Kumara Republic
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For the record, Dr Clydesdale has previously published reports critical of business immigration from Asia. I don't see that as a major issue, since most immigrants from those nations are filtered through the points system or tertiary instutions.
With Pacific immigration, I agree that the issue's too big to be swept under the carpet. And with the annual Pacific quotas there are genuine questions to be asked about quality vs quantity.
But the last time the drawbridge was raised shut - including attempts to de-naturalise 'overstayers' with the dawn raids - the issue went to the Privy Council in 1982, which ruled in favour of Samoa in regards to the right of NZ citizenship.
Even the Western Samoa Citizenship Act 1982, which restricted that right to those already in NZ, didn't close the floodgate.
And the Cook Islands, Niue & Tokelau have always been under direct control by NZ (and previously Samoa), so their people have NZ citizenship of right.It's easy to pull away the welcome mat or impose de-naturalisation. It's quite another thing to navigate the litigation minefield that would probably result.
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Perhaps a bi-cameral system could be debated. Structured properly, it might offer a very useful check / balance on the current system to restrict the ability of one arm of government running off in directions for which it never gained a mandate.
We had an upper house aeons ago - the Legislative Council. By the time Sid Holland mothballed it in 1951, it had become little more than a rubber stamp for the Parliament.
If the electoral system absolutely had to be changed, then I agree it should be anything but FPP.
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APW: I'm inclined to agree here. It's bare-faced anti-intellectualism. And the same people who complain that tall-poppy syndrome is holding us back are quite happy to pull out the scythe when it suits them.
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Where do manga catgirl ears fit into all this? Would it then turn into an Asian Angst issue redux? ;)
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and a pool of money they've been forcing their citizens to save that's available to invest in their economy (we're late to that game - hopefully Kiwisaver will put us in play too - but it will take a while for that to bloom)
I hope those whingeing about KiwiSaver for what it is will eventually realise Dancing Cossacks are so 1975.
Also, when DFC went bankrupt it left a major vacuum of risk capital that angel investors and Tradenz have not been able to fill ever since. Its basic business model was sound - it ultimately came to grief because it strayed outside of its core compentency during the mid-1980s irrational exuberance.
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Jeremy Eade:
The “timebombs” of a growing disenfranchised sector of the first world population are real (let alone the brothers and sisters outside our international trading clubs) and while we may be able to hide them in the “invisible’ suburbs for twenty years they just might start organising one day in ways that may make you feel uncomfortable.
I interpret that as more Los Angeles 1992 than Paris 1968.
Rich:
I reckon most of the people threatening to clear off to Aussie because we pay too much tax are estate agents, salespeople and the odd accountant. All of whom we can easily replace, or do without.
You can add monoculturalists to the above list. That particular crowd has done their civic duty for NZ by taking their insularity with them and increasing our collective intelligence. I'd only be worried if they somehow form a paramilitary and do a Bay of Pigs.
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Nick D:
Sometime in the past two weeks I read a thinkpiece on a reputable site (but can't for the life of me find it now) putting forward the case that the really high price of oil really is due to speculators.
Which is why Nobel Economics winner James Tobin proposed his namesake speculation tax in the early 1980s.
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I'd have the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" played on the big day.
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If there's a Stalinist/Mugabeian equivalent of Godwin's Law (ie, Reductio ad Stalinum) the EFB ruckus was overflowing with it.