To be honest I find it a bit crazy to think that we have a tribunal setting the prices of things right up to the early 90s. I find it really hard to see how something like that could come about today!

Cool video, a life long NZ economist who grew up in the wake of the Great Depression from a generation earlier. Thanks for linking, that was an interesting watch! We should really bring back state owned power and other essentials.

At this point I’m just hoping someone invents a star trek style replicator to make money irrelevant.

My main question with this is if there is anything truly different from our current rules, and if those differences are clearly enough defined to actually be enforecable and make a difference.

I know Foodstuffs operate more stores than Woolworths, and splitting along the existing brand lines is easier, but it still feels wrong to take the cooperative, owned by the franchisees, where the profits go back to the local store owners, and break it up. While some giant Australian company that owns everything from the supply and distribution through to the dirt under it’s stores is left untouched.

Would that count? Most of those faces are like a single pixel of detail from the stage.

Yeah for sure. You could smell the change in those two as soon as it was election year.

Yeah Opportunity fall under the Radical centrism umbrella, which that wikipedia page actually has them listed. It’s basically what you said, they have big ideas (radical) but are very pragmatic, will work with anyone (centrism) to move things in the right direction. This is opposed to the idealists Greens or Act which stand on their side so don’t get as many opportunities to progress any of their policies.

I hope you’re right 😅

The more I think about it, the more I think Luxon’s lack of political experience is a problem for National. And perhaps their advisors aren’t so good either.

Ruling out working with Opportunity based on one policy he doesn’t like shows a complete lack of understanding of how a multi-party government works. Say you won’t agree to the land tax but will try to find common ground in another area?

I get he was trying to stop National voters from going for Opportunity in the hope of a National/Opportunity party, but it still seemed like the wrong call.

I would be so happy to have Winnie no longer the kingmaker.

“Vote for us, and we will undo an increase we put in place last time we were in government” is an odd promise to make. Do you have a plan or are you making it up as you go?

I always have trouble with the post, get a paywall half the time and just no article the other half. Reading mode works I think, if the article is only like 50 words?

What are they protesting over? Just that there is a separate water bill? They don’t want meters? They don’t like the structure?

We got a big water bill but our rates dropped by almost as much, I think there was an overall increase of a few hundred which would be expected considering how rates climb every year anyway.

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.