Genesis

I told Kate she was a turnip voting for them!! In the end I got off my arse and voted green (as I was alarmed I would not have been allowed to moan about politicians for 3 years!) as they are the only party on earth I have any kind of alignment with value wise.

Hey ho, as I have mooted they are all pretty much useless and in the end all pretty much out just for themselves and thier own agendas. They do not give a stuff about us. I wonder how far right Justcol voted?

luvwelly

Genesis - she must have fallen for John's charm lol....

Expat Kiwi

They already are, are you feeling any richer for it?

This is a link to all the active mines in Australia and they haven't even scratched the surface here yet. You'll need Google Earth to view it

http://www.australianminesatlas.gov....ting_Mines.kmz

Justcol

Mana party...not that its any of your business

lardyl

and did we expect anything different from the smiling assassin and his cronies.
Can't see it getting any better to be honest.
Perhaps we should press for a citizen's invoked reffurendum asking for NZ to become another state of Aus......? We are pretty close and it could be mutually beneficial. Then all the nasty stuff could be done over the ditch whilst we look after yoghurt, butter, cheese and possum handbags??
Of course National would oppose it.

http://nzstatehood.yolasite.com/

lardyl

you are having a larf aren't ya

lardyl

more like libertenz or whatever they are called.
No I think it was ACT and there is some deflecting going on.

Justcol

Am I ?????

luvwelly

I think he's having us on there???? Not that it's any of my business I agree

Hey Justcol - are you old enough to remember 'I didn't vote Tory' badges in the UK. I am. Potential NZ growth opportunity maybe "I voted National but still oppose asset sales'.

The great thing (maybe) about MMP is that in Wellington (a rich part of NZ) many voters put Labour for their Electorate MP and National for the party vote. This is real power for the voter I think. Of course I didn't do that as I prefer to pin my support to one mast.

Wish they would get the special votes and referendum counted though - why a two week delay?

lardyl

what?
so they think the person best able to represent them is the candidate they vote for and the best party to form the government is not the one that their representative is a part of. Weird, but then I suppose people in Welly are weird. Too close to too much power.

anyway the vagries of MMP and it's abuse have already surfaced with ACT's policy "victories". Banks bleating on about how great a deal he has got for his c&s support. Even worse than last time you could argue.

Been thinking harder about MMP.
To me the only way to make it acceptable is remove totally the FPP element and give us STV in the electorates. That would be more proportional.
Then probably remove coat-tailing and take the threshold down to zero to compensate. Let's have lots of small parties.
And have some form of mandatory transparent selection for list candidates that involves party members as it should do in the electorates.
Or you could have two types of candidate, one a list and the other an electroate.

I still want a representative not a party to serve me. Thanks very muchly.

luvwelly

I'm even cooler with STV but that is a much purer form of PR than MMP.

Have been cringing at media leaks re what deal Banks and 'my MP' have got out of Mr Smile and Wave this time and how 'wonderful' they are. Still want to know the final seat outcome re the special votes and the referendum.

I agree that 'one man band' parties just seem inherently wrong but what can you do when the Leader of a major party stitches 2 seats up in advance like that and the dumb voters go along with it?

I agree it is schizo to vote for a different party in the Electorate than in the Party Vote. Apparently Labour's electorate vote share was 35% not 27% BUT if people can and do do this, they do it for a reason and I think that reason in most cases is to avoid giving large majorities to the Governing Party even though MMP wouldn't usually deliver big majorities anyway even if they didn't split their vote.
So you may not like it but it does in fact give the voter more power to force politicians to co-operate.
This is not the first time it has happened like this according to Radio NZ National this evening. National's lowpoint of 20% party vote also had a higher Electorate vote share.

Maybe I will have to rethink my opposition to Peter Dunne since he is apparently claiming to have saved Radio NZ National from being sold off as part of his deal with Mr Key. In truth much as I like Radio NZ National as a substitute UK Radio 4, it would not make me vote for his 'one man band'.
He has also bagged free over 65 health checks lol. Just one per person once I think so oldies don't get too excited.

Charismatic

Cuts to the Department of Conservation:
Link

That's less than $3 per person in New Zealand saved?

Justcol

buts its still a saving of 7.5 million.
The only $x per person slant can be applied to anything. personally I can think
of a lot of better places I'd like to see my tax $$$ spent than funding DOC

luvwelly

Yeah maybe but that's 96 more people unemployed with knock-on effect on their attached family, so the true saving is potentially much less.

Justcol

most of the time the jobs simply get farmed out to contractors