So apparently passing all legislation under urgency to avoid review by select committee might have consequences.

Oh year you’re right. That article had corrections respond, but with better PR they could have twisted that around. Instead of waiting for an OIA, they could be proactively highlighting this stuff to the media. In my experience the media will be happy to publish press releases pretty much as is, in order to feed their 24 hour news.

The problem is that these stories are all true. Corrections did spend over $300k on stocking slushy machines over 6 years. Which is $50k a year, peanuts to an organisation with 10k staff. You could save far more money by having a single person on home detention instead of prison. The numbers appear big to the average person, partly because they sum up many years to make the number sound bigger, and partly because the average person is running their household on a much smaller scale than the government runs on. But it’s tiny, and almost certainly was cheaper than the alternative (installing air conditioning for prisons to cover the hottest January on record).

In this case the article cites the source as an OIA requested by “a member of the public”. I have no evidence that the Taxpayers’ Union are behind this article, but they are often cited, and these articles are a lot more common when National isn’t in government, because they want to sell Labour as being irresponsible with money despite the national debt always growing under National (because of irresponsible tax cuts).

The Taxpayers’ Union have a political strategy that they employ that wouldn’t fall afoul of these rules. When the opposition is in government, they provide the seeds to article after article to be published in the media about how this government department is wasting money here or there. You saw them every week when Labour was in power, about how Corrections spent hundreds of thousands on slushy machines (ignoring that the alternative was millions in air conditioning) and other crap like that.

I haven’t seen that sort of thing since National were in, but you can be sure those articles about the government “wasting” money will be back once the left bloc is in power again. The articles are never attributed to the Taxpayers’ Union, but occasionally they will be cited as the source (“an OIA by the Taxpayers’ Union”).

Campaigning for the electorate vote only is an interesting strategy, I wonder how well it will work?

Nah TPM don’t care about party votes, they often (always?) win more seats than their party vote share as they often lose the party vote to Labour.

If they expect more seats than their party vote share, then party votes are wasted votes. If they go to another left bloc party, the left bloc are more likely to get into power where TPM can be part of a coalition.

Yeah something like that is what I imagine too. I think our voting system needs tweaks, not replacement. And I definitely don’t want to go to a world where the right bloc can win 51% of the vote in every electorate and get 100% of the seats.

Yeah I am not sure it really was. The option I want wasn’t listed. I want our current MMP system, but with a transferable vote.

Generally the options in that referendum seemed to involve voting for candidates and those people forming parliament. I want our electorate/party system, but being able to rank first, second, third choice etc.

It’s basically criminal that the referendum didn’t include the exact system I want 😋

But seriously, we could easily implement this and it would be way more democratic than this system where if you vote for someone that gets 4.2% of the vote, the 5 MPs they should qualify are just not counted and are given to other parties instead. I get the feasibility of 120 different parties trying to make a coalition, but STV for selection of parties, otherwise using the existing system, would get a lot closer to people’s actual views because no one would need to guess whether their preferred party might get 5%.

I’d be keen to see limits on political advertising from non-parties. Free Speech Union. Taxpayers Union. Hobson’s Pledge.

I’m sure there are some that aren’t far-right that would be affected but it seems the far-right is where most of the advertising money is.

Yeah I can’t imagine the result of Chris Penk leaving having any serious impact on who we have in government after the election.

TIL there’s a South Island Minister.

It’s now a less than 50% chance since you said that and jinxed it 😋

They typically have quite a few undecided, but I don’t see that there. So maybe more undecided voters?

Without the Curia data the swings month to month are much higher. It seems odd that 1/7 swings it that much, are the Curia poll results that different from the others?

I am pretty stoked to see Opportunity polling this high. I go to the pub and people are talking about them, so it’s not just Lemmy but the average person is starting to hear about them and their policies are resonating with them.

This does seem to be a little bit of an odd announcement. They are announcing that they are going to let teachers use reasonable force, which is already the law. When asked what’s different they have basically said they will explain later. So what are they announcing?

I guess the announcement is their continued believe that fines people can’t afford is the way to improve things?

My kids are primary school age and don’t know about TikTok or Instagram, or Youtube shorts. But I can imagine them getting sucked in if they were allowed to watch that sort of thing. It’s probably a challenge I have coming up in the next few years, when other kids their age start getting phones and having access to these kinds of media.

People have been saying for years that attention spans are getting shorter, hopefully someone is studying it!

You probably do get quite a different view than I do! But now you mention it, I do know people like that, where the TV is constantly on.

I have three kids who all read for fun (mostly visual novels at the moment, due to reading ability), and I think this is partly because the TV is generally off in our house. When I was a kid it was almost never off, so maybe it’s not a new problem!

What is a new problem is that social media sites and app development companies hire psychologists to try to get people to spend more time on their apps (addict them). I say new, but I was reading about this happening 15 years ago, I have to assume they have refined the art by now. I am not sure banning the sale of phones to under 16s will be enforceable, but I like the idea a hell of a lot more than giving my ID to facebook.

I do wonder exactly how it will work too. There is a big difference between giving the kids a phone to watch bluey on for a long car trip, and having free access to a phone. We have spare smart phones the kids use. They have to ask, and they don’t have social media on them, just podcasts, music, and libby (plus the above mentioned bluey el al for long car trips). Do they have to possess a social media app for them to count as possession of a smart phone? What if it came on the phone and it’s logged out?

What we need is a proper policy defined by experts, rather than politicians defining rules about things they don’t understand.

I’d argue many people react in shock now to the idea of free access to smart phones! But I might live in a bubble.

2.5% of the wealth over $10M. It’s not historically outrageous, only in recent times. We do need to tax wealth, and economically it’s likely better than taxing income (I presume Greens aren’t planning on removing that though).

But I prefer the Opportunity 1.7% LVT proposed, which is not on the total property value just on the land. This is intended to lower house prices, which introduces the possibility of having more money by paying more tax. They also waant a UBI which would offset any extra tax paid by most people (their estimates are that 90% of people would be the same or better off).

Realistically though, no small party is going to pass a large scale tax reform. Whatever their policies, they would be lucky to get a fraction of their intent across the line. This goes for Greens and Opportunity.

It’s better than age checks on social media. But I do still wonder if there is a solution to the fact that all the problems with social media are not exclusive to under 16s.

Yeah but I guess I’d like to know more about the dumb phones. My gut feeling is that there will be an argument around safety related reasons for needing a smart phone. Do the dumb phones have GPS, maps, etc?

"Parliament could pass a law defining what constitutes a “dumb phone” suitable for a person under 16.

Because it’s Seymour I am also wondering is this line is a request for donations from phone companies or suppliers…