Hey people… Here is a thread, go wild. If you havent posted on the site before, it may take a little while for your post to come up 
Note: This is the continuation of a long thread on the UCD private list…
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21 Comments
Where’s your opining, Mr Matthew? I figured I’d get in and comment so that after I come back from my exam I won’t be a n00b commenter and I’ll be able to rant all I like…
About how much I don’t want another Labour-led government! :-p
Damn it, I just lost my mile long post. Ah well you will just have to put up with a less justified rant.
Well, let me contribute my position.
Wigrm Electorate - Jim Anderton. Your thinking, not him again. He’s been elected by this electorate without fail with more than the number of votes of the labour and national candidates together (most elections). So, rationale… The labour candidate is acceptable but is hardly inspiring. The national candidate, Marc Alexander, looks like Ron Jeremy - at least in photos if not in RL. He also dained to send us a recipe instead of policy on his first flyer run. On enquiry (by my flatmate) he declared that people don’t want policy rammed down their throats. While this may be true, it is not the point, sorry Mark, you just lost my vote (not to mention he can’t produce logically coherent emails, so how is he going to produce logically coherent policy?). The other candidates are far too inexperienced and experience does count for something. Jim, as leader of the Progressives, has strong social liberal policies that I believe are just what the country needs. I also think that having a few effectively idependents in parliament is a good move. If politicians can’t cooperate with each other, then we shouldn’t be voting for them.
Party Vote - Green. Though, I am very willing to be swayed.
Rationale:
National - National’s policies are near identical with labour’s. In the few cases where they don’t look like a copy paste, the social or economic benefits, over labour’s proposed policy, is nearly always invisible or worse. There is also the issue of John Key, I’m sorry, I simply don’t trust the man. Even less than Helen. I can’t trust someone who doesn’t have a clue about New Zealand history and the major issues that have faced our country. I can’t trust someone that obviously changes his mind whenever it suits his political aspirations.
Labour - Now I won’t claim that labour is much better than national. To quote Wag the Dog, “.. and never change horses in midstream”. Watch it! But I will claim that Helen’s ugly head is screwed on a lot tighter than John Key’s. I will claim that Labour has, all things considered, actually done a pretty good job in protecting our economy over the last nine years, improving the standard of living and making a good (though insufficient effort) towards protecting the environment.
Green - I just mentioned the environment. As a nation, we are just about the only nation on earth that has a ‘green’ image. This is totally and utterly undeserved. The only reason we haven’t been ratted out is that we are a small population living on a relatively large amount of land. The green party is slowly emerging from their hippy roots as a main stream party with policies that reflect the basic international considerations of a Green party - these are a liberal base with a focus on maintaining and conserving the environment, non violent policies and achieving them through a grass roots movement. Now, the greens policies fit the nation and, imo, mostly seem sensible and worthwhile.
Possible Flaws
- They are the only party to embrace maori culture (sans the maori party oc) as a more than tokenistic part of our community.
- Some of their people are still a little wishy washy, but they are honest and have integrity.
- The ETS has a few flaws to it. Good in principle, not so great in practice.
- I’m sure there are many others.
NZ First - Sorry, No
ACT - Sorry, No
Progressives - Not well rounded enough policies for a party vote.
Anthony, I don’t believe there is a party running called ‘United Front’. Did you mean United Future? I know they claim it doesn’t exist, but I really don’t ever support the involvement of relgion in state. Sure they have some good policies, but over all they don’t like someone to jump off a cliff for…
So thats my rant. Feel free to convince me I am in error!
Hmmm, while a number of those comments are true, I think a vital point has been left out: Greens lack the ability to not drive our economy into ruins.
Agreed, the ETS has a few flaws (unfortunately MASSIVE ones) but is a fundamentally good idea. Agreed, they are predominantly fairly trust worthy (though I wouldn’t trust Fitzsimons as far as I could throw her). And agreed, they would be good for aiding in making our ‘green’ image a reality.
For those reasons I think the day that the Greens don’t get at least a few seats is going to be a very bad day for New Zealand indeed - I think they are a very important balancing power for our Govt.
However plain and simple if they ever get voted in our country is screwed. Our economy will go down the drain because they have no economic feasibility whatsoever and they place all of their environmental policies far above any other policies.
This would be a bad enough feature if the world market were in a stable state, but we all know that it’s far from that right now and is likely to get far worse before it gets better. While I think a lot of the Greens policies are worth implementing or trying to adapt to more feasible options, I think right now we need someone who can lead us through the economic downturn as unscathed as possible.
Additionally, they have next to no ability to maintain their goals without sinking a lot of resources into them, which is understandable with any big, long term goals, but as previously stated there are bigger fish to fry right now.
Next on the agenda is Labour. Again, some good policies and I will (grudgingly) admit they haven’t ruined us in the last 9 years so they’re not doing too bad.
However I have two main gripes with them and for me they are two very important issues.
- I am utterly anti the anti-smacking bill for a number of long-winded reasons I won’t get into, not because it is a terrible idea, but because it has potential to do more harm than good. I am the first to admit, so far it has had no negative impacts, but I can’t help but think it’s only a matter of time… However the real issue of this point is that the majority of the Labour MPs opposed it, as did the majority of most groups. So the fact that it was pushed through (especially so quickly!) despite what everyone seemed to want, gives me the feeling that she can say “Fuck you, I’m the PM, I’ll do it anyway”
- Bribery much? I’m a student, I understand the allure of universal allowance, but that close to elections announcing a policy like that which will sway the majority of a population (students, obviously) if they are even slightly undecided just strikes me as a last ditch bribery attempt. This wasn’t actually one of the two main issues, I just remembered it now and was like RAR.
- Business. Helen has done wonders for labour workers. If you look at it the way she wants you to look at it. Higher minimum wage? Great, now unskilled workers are pushed out of the market, more people are enticed into the market but can’t get jobs, but hey look at the x percent who are getting higher wages now! Yay!
More holiday pay! Stricter dismissal rules! All so very, very wonderful for the worker, but now the employer is tied in knots. Yes, I am biased on this viewpoint because my dad has a small business, but can you really tell me that it’s fair that you can’t tell someone ‘I’m sorry, I just don’t think you’re right for this company’ if they don’t fit in, or if they don’t get on with all the staff, or if they just plain aren’t what you’re looking for?? Can you honestly tell me that it’s fair that you can’t dismiss someone when you catch them taking DRUGS at work? That instead you have to give them verbal AND written warning?
Can you honestly tell me it’s fair that if you employ a new worker and their girlfriend calls in sick for them on their third day at work, and then the next day saying they won’t be in for at least the next few days, and then their mother a few days later saying the same, until they’ve been away for TWO WEEKS, having worked TWO DAYS, and more over you know from a friend of theirs that for at least some of the time they were in Nelson, not sick. And until that person fails to call for THREE DAYS, no matter how long they have been gone for, you can not dismiss them??
There is no regard whatsoever for business in Labour’s eyes and for me that is not acceptable. Business drives our economy, and economy is a key point I keep coming back to. Lol, Key. Bad, totally unintentional pun.
So moving onto National thanks to that nice little tie in there. When it comes to economical policies, yes they are far above the rest. Yes, if I was forced to vote right now it would probably be for National. However I think they are being at worst underhanded and at best making a poor strategic move with regards to the amount of policy they are keeping under wraps and for that reason I probably won’t be voting in this election.
I know, very well, that the only National policies I know well are the ones that sit very well with me, so until I know enough dirt about them (which I would need to find the resources for myself, not just be told) to make a properly informed decision as to which party is the better of many evils this election, I don’t think I can make an educated enough decision to be a voter. I think it would be morally unacceptable for me to make a vote based solely on information I only have one side of, and unfortunately I should be studying, not politicking, at the moment so it isn’t likely I will have that information by this weekend.
So while I don’t expect or even encourage anyone to vote based on my views (Christ, if anyone did that I think they should be shot), there they are anyway.
Sorry for the uber long windedness.
Oops, my bad!
Yeah, I meant United Future. Now I feel like a tard for that mistake on such a long email, let alone with the few grammatical errors I collected…
What do you mean about religion in this party? You see, there is nothing explicit in their principle statement or anything I can find about policy. The only thing I could see is this base of society starting with family. I really don’t think that is the greatest thing ever, and I don’t see how it fits in so well with the rest of their policy, yet overall I find them more attractive than the other parties (although Green could sway me). Do these guys have a history with ‘religious nuts’, well, you get my drift, supporting them? This bothers me now…
United Future formed as a coalition of of United New Zealand and the Christian Democrats. Not so much in the last couple of years (maybe because they have had a pretty low visibility in parliament etc), but previously they got a lot of slack for claiming to be secular but for being fairly fundamentalist Christian in outlook. Whether this is currently true or not remains to be seen.
Ah…
Apparently national doesnt want your candidate vote :-P: http://national.org.nz/web/change_card.pdf
I will admit that labour’s policys for small businesses suck balls. But then, why on earth would you trust National’s policies when they don’t have any. They can do whatever they can get away with.
This is national’s page on Small Business - it is empty of policy… http://www.national.org.nz/PolicyAreas.aspx?S=50
I am attempting to get in touch with a contact of mine who works for the Green party and get some information direct from the horses mouth as it were…
The more I look at Green, the more I like. It’s a shame they don’t have their ecomonic plans more publicised
Funny about National’s non-want of the candidate vote - Winston Peters said the same thing of NZ First when he came to UC. I wonder if they stole that idea as well…
This is a good interview: http://www.radionz.co.nz/__data/assets/audio_item/0004/1773841/election-20081104-1043-Helen_Clark_says_Labour_in_huge_generational_change-m048.asx
Actually RadioNZ has a lot of good stuff…
US Elections are on, live BBC commentary can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7700298.stm
Well… Where do I begin?
First up, I’ll proffer the Green policy examples given in my exam earlier this week, which were taken from the Green party website on the 21st of October 2008 and from interviews with Jeanette Fitzsimons on the 19th of October - and of course I’ll add my two cents.
Among other things, the Greens want to:
- Empower central and regional government to introduce a water levy on commercial use of all water used on a volume basis. This would not apply to households or stock drinking water.
*Rosa’s opinion: this is a perfectly acceptable policy, if water is a scarce resource. However, from an economic perspective I’d argue that if it is indeed scarce then domestic use should also be taxed.
- Develop a range of levies on scarce resources, waste and pollution. Taxes collected in this way would be used to fund a tax-free threshold of $10,000; marginal tax rates above $10,000 will remain constant. We will reform the tax system so everyone pays less income tax, clean businesses are rewarded and wasters and polluters pay more.
*Rosa’s opinion: like a lot of Green party policy, on the surface this sounds like a great idea (actually, this is a common problem with policy across the board, but the Greens are particularly good at thinking things might be good for us and not seeing the greater effects or problems). First, we need to note that scarce resources with property rights (i.e. land, which people own - you can’t just roll up and start using it, and if you do the law will step in) will look after themselves for the large part. Cost will rise according to scarcity, so the less of a resource there is the more it will cost. Businessmen will also ration the release of non-renewable scarce resources, because it will make their business more profitable. If you’re interested in how this works, Google ‘the hotelling model’.
With regard to waste, businesses already pay disposal costs, which internalise the costs of waste - waste disposal costs include the using up of land from landfill, which in turn increases as land is more ‘used up’. So the more waste we make, the more expensive it’ll get - it’s actually in our best interests to find alternatives where we can (although recycling may not really be a fabulous option, but I think my rant will be long enough without going into that!).
I agree that incentives to encourage businesses not to pollute are sensible, but these incentives should reflect the cost of pollution on the rest of us (hard to measure) and when we find some sort of fair measure the money collected should be put towards meeting those costs - so offsetting or cleaning up. It’s completely irrelevant to put revenue from such an activity towards tax cuts - and I’m of the opinion our tax system is plenty progressive enough without more tax break at the bottom.
- Make sustainability a key goal of all business support programmes provided through government funded organisations
*Rosa’s opinion: This isn’t going to do anything particularly negative, except potentially waste taxpayer dollars that don’t need spending. It does depend a bit what they mean by sustainable, but as a general rule no business is going to want to be unsustainable, because that’ll make their profits unsustainable! Roger Beattie has some interesting things to say about this - he’s trying to farm weka so that they’ll stop being endangered, and then he plans to sell them as a unique NZ kind of gourmet poultry. Did you ever hear of a farmed animal being made extinct?
- Increase the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour and ensure it cannot fall below 66% of the minimum wage.
*Rosa’s opinion: sounds nice, but read what Nicky said earlier. This sort of policy actually hurts the people at the bottom of the market, because employers will be able to afford fewer employees, and will avoid those trying to break into the market or stuck at the bottom of the heap.
- Encourage fair trade with developing countries that support sustainable development
*Rosa’s opinion: I’d like as much as anybody for all the workers in developing nations to have fair wages and work in good conditions, which is what fair trade sets out to do. However, more often it just ends up distorting markets, by enticing additional farmers into the market with artificially high prices, and actually ends up doing worse things for them - you get oversupply, fair trade only buys a set allocation so most farmers miss out on the inflated price (so it does benefit a few, but the few are very few), and the extra supply drives the market price down so everyone else is worse off.
- Oppose trade deregulation in public goods, services and utilities, and where desirable, roll back GATS commitments [commitments to replace non-tariff barriers with equivalent tariffs in the short term, and reduce those tariffs in the longer term]
*Rosa’s opinion: trade is good! Good for us, because we can afford more of the goods other countries have comparative advantages in, and good for other countries for the same reason, and also (for developing nations) because we can help drive their economies, creating more jobs, more demand for labour, and ultimately better wages and working conditions. I’m getting tired of ranting and want my lunch, so I won’t give the economics lesson on comparative advantage etc., but the interwebs will surely provide plenty of information on how this works if you wonder. Economists mostly agree that there are very few useful applications for tariffs, and appropriate examples are even less common.
- Uphold international labour and environmental agreements though an International Trading Organisation and regional trading agreements to replace the World Trade Organization.
*Rosa’s opinion: I am not positive if I have interpreted this correctly, but what I understand is that the Greens want to use agreements to limit trade to countries who live up to our standards of what is ‘appropriate’. First up, making high standards will just preclude developing nations from trading - and that’s not going to help them develop at all. Secondly, on the subject of environmental standards, generally developing nations, as they start on the road to prosperity but long before they arrive will suffer a decline in environmental conditions, followed by a much larger improvement as soon as average incomes reach about US$10k/year (due to people’s demand for clean air, water etc once they have enough of the basics). So actually, the best way to help countries such as China improve their environmental standards is to continue developing their economy.
- Stop importing goods produced by slave, prison and child labour
*Rosa’s opinion: there is nothing good about slave or prison labour, and I don’t endorse either of them at all. However, child labour is a bit more tricksy. Children who work in factories do so because they can’t afford not to. When you take those jobs away, those same children will generally turn to worse options, such as prostitution or scavenging dumps for discarded items they can sell. Once the economy the children live in gets to a point where their parents can afford to not send their kids off the factory each day, they won’t - what parent wants to send their 10-year old to work? Having children in the workforce is a common factor of developing nations - in 1900 in the US, 20% of children between 8 and 14 years of age were in the workforce. My great great grandfather started work in a mine in England at the age of 8. You don’t see that happening in the western world anymore!
- Ensure government buys local goods and services to support businesses and jobs.
*Rosa’s opinion: I’d rather my taxpayer dollar was spent on encouraging New Zealander’s to develop businesses they’re good at.
I’m sorry: I know this is incredibly long. Because I wrote exam answers on these they’ve been banging around in my head… And hey, Matt did ask for it!
Also, I am reasonably much pitted against a universal student allowance, or in fact any student allowance, because it really doesn’t do anything good for our nation - only for the individual students it benefits. The current loan system is poor, and the fact that some students can claim the allowance based on relatively arbitrary criteria makes it completely ridiculous - but I am fully pitted against a universal allowance, and maybe I’ll rant more on that later.
But now I’m going to go have lunch!
Ok, sure. I will actually accept most of your justifications. Sure they are going to cost the country economically. Remember however two things,
a) This is a minor political party, they have to present opinions that are unrealistically biased. Now these may negatively affect voting for them, however if they don’t present a strong position, they won’t even get a compromise.
b) Voting is an emotive case, whatever happens in parliament. What party policies are trying to do is appeal to voters emotionally. Hence although child labour may be sensible economically, promoting child labour is probably a bad move for any party.
With regards to the individual points, I will get back to them soon.
The US Election is going strong:
Obama on 77
McCain on 27
To win - 270
I know it’s all about emotion - quite annoying, but it’ll never change.
The problem with the compromise is that even their compromised policy tends to be awful. That ‘Buy New Zealand Made’ campaign - well, not only did Oliver Driver become exceedingly annoying, but the Ministry of Economic Development spent bucketloads on making and screening the ads, which aren’t actually helpful - buying NZ made isn’t helpful to our economy, unless you’re buying the things we’re good at, which people don’t need to be told to buy, and it helps us even less to throw money down the drain that way. Now, if they had reallocated THAT to research and development, Matt, that would have worked for me.
I’m about to do some reading on Act, because they have the best (in my opinion) policies on student funding (by which I mean no universal allowance, and reintroducing interest on loans), and I’m interested to see what else they represent. Anybody got anything to say on Act?
Rosa, you’re awesome.
Those were really, really good points, thanks for the info
As for Act, I completely agree with regards to their allowance/loans schemes and am also about to start reading (have had their site bookmarked for ages but haven’t had time yet). Much of what I’ve heard since I’ve started paying attention to Act has been good, though.
Ads? What ads? I no have TV…
They were on buses and in magazines and the paper too. Head buried in the sand, much? :-p
May I say one thing in favour of John Key.
I’m not a fan of pursuing things at any cost, and an example of where people get caught up on this is trying to save the environment. Yes, the environment is good, but so are many other things - there is a trade off in trying to save the environment through schemes like the ETS, and promoting economic growth.
If the ETS gets passed, we will be the first OECD country to limit emissions, which will make us less competitive internationally. When you factor in how little we contribute to carbon emissions on a global scale, it begs the question: is it worth it? As far as I can tell, this question is yet to be asked by Labour/Greens.
However, in the first leader’s debate, John Key said exactly this: that whether or not is worth it needs to be addressed - in other words the ETS is not worth pursuing at any cost, and the cost needs to be calculated.
This is not a popular position I imagine, with all the emotive value that is attached to being “green”, and Key has stuck to this.
You make many (and more) points which I find disatifying about Green. And thank you Matt, as your point to me has made me understand where UF’s family centre thing came from…something which I didn’t like much in the first place, and now cannot like at all…I think though at the end of the day there’s not going to be a party I agree with 100%, not even 75%, but I will have to bite the bullet with one which I reckon is most appealing. I have two days left to do more reading!
Well, Anthony, tell me if you dig up any dirt on Act, because they’re seeming favourable to me at the moment, but I am not decided!
To be honest, I hadn’t even got around to looking at them until now, and I actually quite like, but I’ve only just skimmed over what they say…Oh, this is confusing!