Posts by Rex Widerstrom
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Ken Sparks,
However he does seem to have a few fans so maybe they just want to cater to them.
Undoubtedly he does, but the thing is, they're fans not because he's particularly good at interviewing and presenting (he's not), or offers any insight, or brings anything to the table other than bigotry, a complete lack of shame and an unfettered ego.
But they could get that from virtually anyone - well anyone in a few bars and clubs in which I've had a beer. If they wanted a "professional" then there are any number of provincial broadcasters whose egos (and the smell of a bit of cash... they aren't paid much over $40k these days) would mean they'd happily mouth that tripe even if they didn't believe it.
And they'd quickly gain and maybe exceed (because they're new and exciting rather than hackneyed and predictable) a following from the same sorts of people who support Henry. And they'd work for much less.
So the real question, for me at least, isn't "why did they hire a bigot" but "why did they hire that bigot, and at several times the price?".
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to James Butler,
We also wouldn't be paying for minor parties' workloads according to the proportion of the country they represent
We could still fund staff in accordance to that proportion. But as I said, I'm not endorsing Yvette's suggestion, just pointing out that, if implemented, the only place we'd notice the difference was in the Estimates under "Parliament", certainly not in any measurable output of work or even thought from most list MPs.
serious consideration to when placing their party vote
I wouldn't have liked to have been a loyal Act voter contemplating my choices prior to the last election, given that some of Garrett's true colours had been displayed in that appalling homophobic TV performance: not cast a vote for the party I support, or do so knowing I'm responsible for what that man was obviously about to do. Or slit my wrists.
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
So basically, a smaller party (that has one or no electorates) would be solely represented by the leader, who would cast a block vote at their discretion.
(Call me cynical, but you were in NZ First some time ago, right? I can see how that would have been attractive...)So you think Winston consulted each one of the circus clowns in his caucus before making a decision on something?! A "block vote" is exactly that way it happened in practice, except the NZ taxpayer had the pleasure of paying for the odious Ron Mark, the confused "there's something wrong with immigrants... I know coz I iz 1" Peter Brown, et al.
OTOH what gives someone like, say, any of the NZF '96 intake (who were ranked by Winston, Lhaws and Sarah Neems) any legitimacy? Or, say, David Garrett? None of these people garnered a single vote in their own right, and I think people are smart enough to realise that.
The system Yvette proposed wouldn't stop, say, Winston having an "advisory board" (at his own expense), but we would't be paying for the fallacy that there's an actual caucus he consults.
Note I'm not advancing Yvette's solution as my own favourite (the only advantage it has over the status quo is cost saving), but I like that fact it drops the pretence that list MPs have any real input, so I float it more as a way to make people wake up to the reality, in the hope they'll then explore other options.
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Idiot Savant,
Already done it. It's called the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.
Yeah, we're ahead of the Aussies in that respect (as I took great delight in reminding them when I got the chance to address the Review :-D)
But the Australian example went further, and into far greater detail, with submissions on a variety of issues including specific rights for sub-groups such as indigenous people, refugees, prisoners and others for whom general rights may not be entirely applicable or, alternatively, not go far enough.
That would have informed not just an Australian BORA but also myriad subsidiary legislation.
But I agree, making the NZBORA superior law is the way to go as an interim measure. The rest of it could be undertaken as part of a review of the operation of that Act.
Incidentally, New Zealand came up for its last Universal Periodic Review of human rights by the UN in May 2009. It's a four year cycle so that suggests it'll come up again in mid-2013. That would be an opportune time, perhaps, to highlight this Bill - if it becomes law - and other pieces of legislation which infringe rights.
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Steve Withers,
The votes for the party are evidence that people supported the list - whether they know who is on it or not.
That seems oxymoronic, and instead supports my contention that someone voted for (let's say) Labour's list because they wanted Labour to form the government and had no other way to do it rather than "supporting the list".
I've always favoured STV in some form, possibly heavily modified, but a comment by "Yvette" on a post I wrote on MMP suggested an interesting alternative.
Basically it's that the party vote gives a "weight" to the votes of the Party, cast by the Leader of Whip. So each electorate MP votes, then the "party vote" is simply added on (she explains it better, hence my link whoring).
If people were given a choice between proportionality without the upkeep of indolent, blindly loyal list MPs (for examples, check Danyl's post linked in the original post here, and that's just a few) and the existing system, I suspect they'd go for the former as they don't, in the main, "support the list" or indeed support the idea of list MPs, at all but rather see them as a necessary evil of MMP.
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I'm actually in favour of having a strong, enforcable framework of basic law. But it should be entrenched by popular mandate and reflect real human rights and principles, not the "right to make a fast buck".
(Since you get two posts I'll take two replies :-P)
That's a very important point that seems to be being overlooked by most commentary criticising this Bill... basic law is not a bad thing per se - in fact I wish we had more of it, so as to constrain the wilder excesses of our lawmakers.
The concept of an Act which sets out a framework for future regulation is also not necessarily a bad thing in principle. It's just that this is a very, very bad Bill.
Perhaps it's time for NZ to embark on a national conversation around what we consider to be our basic human rights as Australia did in 2009* and then set about codifying these into law. That way it'd meet the "general consensus" test you correctly prescribe, would thus have widespread support, and could be entrenched.
* Of course Rudd promptly refused to pass any such law despite it being supported by supported by over 87% of a record 35,000 submissions. But hopefully any NZ leader who displayed such hubris would meet with a similar fate.
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Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
A winning list candidate has got 40,000+ votes from the whole country. A winning electroral candidate typically gets 10-15000 votes, all clumped in one place.
Any evidence at all that any voter was aware of, say, anyone below number five on the list of the party for whom they were voting? Given the level of ignorance about MMP (improving, but 1/3 of people still don't know the party vote is most important) what is there to suggest that the majority of voters even know the first five?!
I'd posit that people see a party vote as a vote for the party not any individual or even group of individuals, and see the role of a list MP as being nothing more than a pawn at the disposal of the party's leader (in other words, they have a fairly astute understanding of the reality).
No list MP gains or loses significant votes for their party. Certainly not 40,000 of them. Ironically, the largest vote gain would be from someone like David Garrett, who'd guarantee the votes of a relatively small number of people with whom he was closely associated.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Andrew E,
they might not be failing to do their jobs and might not be inadequate. Conceivably, they're doing their jobs well, and it's their bosses that are turning their work into turds?
A good advisor is also a good salesperson. Winston isn't the easiest person to wrangle, but in all modesty I think I did a fairly good job of ensuring he said the right things by selling him on them, not simply putting them up and hoping.
To his infinite credit, Winston was open to debate and even in-your-face criticism (I lost count of the number of times I let him rant about something, then simply said "Right, but in reality what we'll do is...") Sometimes you need to be willing to tell the Leader (and the Deputy Leader) they're a bloody idiot. You can't do that if you're angling for preferment as the candidate for Mana, for instance.
Unless he's changed significantly since I knew him I don't think Goff is so arrogant or so stubborn he wouldn't take on board good advice, provided it was presented logically and, perhaps, with some passion.
So, going on that - and what I've seen of the performance of individual members of the Goffice, I'm going with the "dropkick" theory.
However, if you don't work to see the outcome you want, why should you be surprised if you don't then get the outcome you want?
Well because our politicians are meant to be our representatives for one thing, and I shouldn't have to staple corflutes and make scones to have a voice in the process - but I realise that's a naive view.
And I'd argue that policy and message development take real time and mental energy if they're done properly. Sure I can pop up on a wiki and say "what about..." and hope someone does something. But there needs to be people who'll research the feasibility of that idea, massage it into a policy, shepherd that policy through the approvals process... that's not a task that can be done gratis by most of us... we're too busy saving up to pay the electricity bill.
I think parties moving to involve those outside its membership in their policy development processes are to be welcomed
Couldn't agree more, which is why one of the first things I did was set up the NZF website and then run an open "bulletin board" (no blogs in them days!) soliciting criticism and ideas. Praise was nice but it gave me nothing new to work on. But then those ideas were picked up and worked on by me, Terry Heffernan and two researchers and the results were evident in the party's shift in the polls. There's no way that, if Terry and I had been asleep at the wheel, any of that would have been of any use.
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Sacha,
I should adopt that as a personal mantra
And you can, for a mere 15% of above-the-line additional revenue generated after it's application. Well I did say I don't provide free advice :P
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Muldoons ill fated dictatorship. That prick left this country in the same state that these buggers will, given the chance.
Whoa, say what you like about Muldoon (and there's much that can be said) but if he were alive today he'd have them wheel his hospital bed to the Parliament forecourt to protest asset sell-offs to foreign "investors" alongside the rest of us.
He may not have had the right ideas, economy-wise, but he was never so wrong as the current lot, or their predecessors, or the Rogernomes.
He knew, for one thing, that you never get anything other than a temporary bump by taking your assets down to Cash Converters and would have scoffed at anyone suggesting it as a strategy. Muldoon was "Think Big", Key is "Sell Big".