Not Voting For Jim

bye, etc

2005-09-26T21:04:00.000+12:45

Just to formalise, I'm not coming back here. This blog was set up for a temporary purpose and it's served it. I've met (or remet) many people I intend to stay in touch with, and I'll still be reading and commenting round the blogosphere, but now I'm returning home.

I can always be found here, and there's an email link there as well. If you're reading this through the LJ feed, there's one set up for the Xanga site as well.

Thanks.

Last Words

2005-09-16T14:03:00.000+12:45

I don't know what I can contribute at this point. I'm not going to make predictions, that'd be ridiculous when the only thing we know is that we don't know anything.

I've made up my mind on my party vote. I won't vote negatively, I can never bring myself to do that, so I looked at which party I had the most common ground with on the things that were most important to me, and I'm voting for them.

Candidate vote, well, I'm considering either not casting it, or taking my eight year old daughter into the booth with me and letting her cast it for me. It's irrelevant anyway. I took the time to look at where Mora stood on conscience issues, and he's diametrically opposed to what I believe in. In fact, I'm now somewhat concerned about his position on the Health Board and the council, given he doesn't believe that the rights of committed couples to marry and adopt children should be universal, and not based on sexual orientation. Of course, neither does Brash. One law for all, as long as you're straight.

The result? It's very difficult for anyone to get a third term in New Zealand. We all, no matter what else we believe in, like to think we believe in fair play. Watch National and Labour both characterise contradictory policies in terms of 'fairness'. So there's this urge in the fairly apolitical middle ground to 'let the other guy have a go now'.

But if there's anything the last six years have proved, it's that economic prosperity and social justice aren't mutally exclusive. In fact, if you look at the history of both the US and New Zealand since the 80s, the conclusion you'd come to is that higher tax = higher growth.

But this is the time to back off from the specifics, take a deep breath, and look at the big picture. I can't do more than recommend this morning's blog from Russell Brown. From here on in, it's just uncork the merlot and cross my fingers.

If you don't vote, don't campaign

2005-09-12T21:37:00.000+12:45

It's been sort of requested that I bother blogging. Lack of bloggage, you can put down to mental exhaustion. My highest level of involvement in the election campaign for the last week has been swearing at the Labour Party for making me remove the plastic wrap from their junk mail before I could throw it in the recycling with everyone else's. The Greens' pamphlet had at least already been through the recycling once.

Pamphlet. I think it's all been said, really. Brash's "I know nothing!" denials brought back my favourite memories of Hogan's Heroes, and then later in the week, I got to relive my teenage years. "Oh, those pamphlets. I thought you meant some other pamphlets. Um, okay, yeah, I did it, but only once. Okay, maybe three times. But I didn't inhale."

We're well past sublime and into ridiculous now, and I for one will be bloody glad to go vote on Saturday and get the whole thing over with. Well, alright, except for however long negotiations take this time round. The only things that have raised me out of 'enough already' lately were;

my daughter's assertion that Peter Dunne has very silly hair
the Destiny NZ ad the other night during the news, which stood out because their guy was standing in front of a mirror, in which his reflection did not appear. Suddenly, it all makes sense...

At this point, there's really only one thing to do to get you through the remaining week, including the last Leaders' Debate, and that's make a drinking game. Seriously, this worked fine for me with both ST:TNG and Teletubbies.

(At this point, I should add a disclaimer. Drinking games are childish and unhealthy. Please always drink rebonsibiply.)

So, from now on, it's a drink if:

a politician on the back foot accuses the media of bias
somebody calls somebody else "silly"
a Wellington Central candidate is assaulted
Don does that 'no no no no no' thing while flapping his hands about
Rodney Hide crashes a photo op
Don has to be told when someone's joking
everyone has to be told when Don's joking
the phrase "my wife is Singaporean" is heard again (I just kind of miss this)
Peter Dunne lies about Green policy and then claims it's a 'figure of speech'
somebody uses the phrases 'family values', 'hard-working New Zealanders', 'clean and green'
a politician slags one of their opponents off by accusing them of indulging in dirty or personality politics.

Full beverage if:

during the debate, Clark cracks and tells John Campbell what she thinks of him
Don is removed from the debate after a tricky question because he's "late for an appointment"
Winston loses his seat (as many full drinks as you feel are warranted)
Rodney Hide doesn't lose his (ditto)
Peter Dunne's hair actually moves
God enters the campaign for real

Contributions in the comments box please.

Don't yell at her, she'll cry!

2005-08-25T13:13:00.000+12:45

Man, you can always rely on the Don, can't you? Just when we were all starting to really switch off from the election campaign, nauseous at the blatant bribery, Don slips his minders and suggests that women just can't cut it in politics.

It wasn't that bad when he started, and I'm really hoping there were minders somewhere going, "Yes, good, civilised discourse, above all that, NOOOO, stop talking! Don't mention her sex!" He could have got away with being too nice to debate, that could have worked for him, but no, he had to say he would have treated her differently had she been a man.

And I think he genuinely believes what he says, and that's the really alarming thing. Because any assessment that Helen Clark is somehow weak and can't handle the cut and thrust of politics has to be based on seeing her as a woman first, and as the person she is a distant second. She can be justifiably accused of a lot of things, but 'weak' simply isn't one of them. He can't see past her being a woman. It's yet another way that he appears to be fundamentally out of touch with reality.

So, let's assume he's not lying and that he genuinely doesn't think women are up to politics or that they should be treated the same way as men. That is what he said. How can he then work with them? How can he work with women in caucus, or on his front bench? Hmm, okay, yeah, forget that. How can he take advice from female civil servants? How can he possibly be an effective Prime Minister if he can't deal with women as equals?

Now, at the risk of sounding just like him, I'm not a rabid feminist. Too many years around the University Feminist Cabal for that. I call myself an Equalist. One of my favourite uni stories is watching a classmate of mine, M, ripped into by a woman because he held a door open for her. And the half-dozen other people with her, some of whom were men. She wasn't even next through the door, she was several people back, she was just that desperate to be offended by something. And we just had to shrug and say, next time, drop the door in her face. And if Don had stopped with saying he's just the kind of guy who doesn't drop doors in people's faces, that'd be fine. But he had to say, no, I held it open for her because she's too weak to handle it.

What really sends me to the floor cackling with glee is that the Don has an interview coming up, with Kim Hill. I do hope he takes it easy on her. She's only a woman.

How Labour gave me Money and Persuaded me not to Vote for Them

2005-08-19T12:40:00.000+12:45

The extension to the Working for Families package has me absolutely furious. I loathe it. Yes, we personally will be better off, by a small but significant amount. And I'd like to be the first to say, I'll give that back and you give it to the family of a beneficiary. They have it harder than we do, and I know, because that used to be us.

The underlying principle is quite sound. The initial WFF package is what finally made it financially viable to move off a benefit into working. There were a bunch of changes in circumstances too, like our kids being old enough to get themselves to and from school, and we would have done it anyway because like the vast majority of people, we want to be self-supporting. But at a real tax rate of 102% on anything over $80 a week... well, it's not exactly an incentive.

This, however. Please, give me one good reason why this assistance shouldn't extend to beneficiaries. One. Why are we discriminating against kids on the basis of their parents' income source? Why are we giving assistance to people who pull in $75 000 a year, before the very poorest?

I know there's an unlying desire to punish people for being on benefits. And I could just, if I tried really hard, see the justification in that for people on the UB. Even though we have the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD, and no-one seems to seriously believe full employment is possible any more. But sickness and invalids beneficiaries? They're on those benefits because they have proven (perhaps not to the righteous Right, but to two medical professionals, one of whom is paid by WINZ) that they are too sick to work. We don't feel the need to punish people for being too old to work.

It's no-one's fault that they're too sick to work. It's certainly not their kids' fault. (Heh, okay, in my case, you can make quite the case for it being my daughter's fault.) It's a struggle, physically and mentally, to raise children when you're ill. Why should it be a vicious financial struggle as well? Most medical conditions, even the purely physical, are aggravated by stress. A more comfortable financial environment may make people more likely to recover.

We're about to take our first proper family holiday ever. This is the first time we've been able to afford it. We're not well off by any stretch, but I don't have to worry about basics like clothing or stress over uniforms, stationery, etc. I'd give up this extra now to have it back then, when we needed it.

A Spanking Shot

2005-08-09T12:22:00.000+12:45

I love cricket. I couldn't tell you why, I was useless playing it as a child, but the sound of a ball being soundly middled sends a quite visceral little shiver through me. The sight of people in whites on a Saturday is one of the true joys of summer for me.

I'm also, as you might have noticed, a big fat Leftie liberal. I was dismayed when England toured Zimbabwe, and I talked about that, and the fate of Henry Olonga, over at my other blog at the time. I was horrified to discover that New Zealand was due to tour, and I've watched the political developments of the last couple of months over this issue with a kind of fatalistic despair, because it was pretty clear from very early on that we were going.

Politics and sport mix all the time. To say they don't is simply naive. But what became apparent is that, in this debate, knowledge of the two spheres, politics and cricket, remained entirely separate. There was an astonishing and almost perverse refusal in New Zealand politics to acknowledge how the ICC works, or to try to use that system to produce a desired result.

Cricket is a game steeped in history and politics. It's England's colonial game, is only played in countries where England has had, however temporarily, a colonial presence, and in African countries has traditionally been very much the white man's game. Administratively, cricket has changed out of sight through the last fifty years, but that colonial history is never forgotten. Look at the Ashes: however mythologised, that first victory over England was an important part of Australia asserting its nationhood and independence as a country equal to its parent rather than subservient. How much more significant in countries that fought wars and armed rebellions to free themselves from the English presence?

The International Cricket Council has just shifted its headquarters from Lords to Dubai. Why no, they're not big on cricket in Dubai. Partly this is for tax reasons - some of their offices are now based in Monaco - but it also reflects the reality that England is no longer the driving force behind cricket. The white man's game belongs to the subcontinent now. The driving force in cricket politically is India.

Phil Goff's attempt to approach the ICC with Jack Straw and Alexander Downer was a painfully gauche misstep diplomatically. As cricket writer Richard Boock said, in gathering all the white nations together, they may as well have gone in wearing their pith helmets with their native bearers behind them. The logical nation for us to approach would have been the one playing the tri series with us in Zimbabwe - India. But New Zealand doesn't have the cricketing clout to get India on side - we're not a world power, we don't have the kudos we'd have pushing this kind of a line in rugby, for instance. And the other problem is that few of the sub-continental cricketing countries could stand up to this kind of human rights scrutiny themselves. They see Zimbabwe being singled out as an easy target, and they're not wrong. There wouldn't be this level of fuss if we were touring Pakistan or Sri Lanka, and there won't be this level of fuss over the Beijing Olympics. (To be clear, I know there are a number of committed left-wing individuals in the blogosphere who are just as opposed to those things as they are to this, but I'm talking about the general public and political reaction to the tour.)

New Zealand cricket had a lot to lose over this - basically, the future of the game for the next decade or so in this country. Something around US$50m in fines and lost income on top of that, which would otherwise go to paying player salaries and developing the game at school and club level here. Possible World Cup co-hosting rights for 2011. And any future influence with the non-white governing clique of the ICC, over anything. I've heard some absolute rubbish talked about Martin Sneddon from people who've never paid any attention to cricket before. The guy is an astute operator, who knows the politics of cricket very well. He organised the tsunami relief games earlier in the year when a lot of commentators didn't think it was going to be possible. This included getting Australia to rearrange their domestic schedule at no benefit to themselves.

So we went. And what happened? We achieved a telling diplomatic blow by playing cricket. On the first day of the match, New Zealand made 492 runs at a tad under seven an over. On the second day we bowled Zimbabwe out twice in rapid succession, winning by more than three hundred runs. It was a crushing, humiliating defeat which seriously calls into question just WHY Zimbabwe has test-playing status, and whether that's more to do with their vote on the ICC than their ability to play cricket. And it's three days of lost revenue for Zimbabwe cricket, and for Sky, who now face gaping holes in their scheduling for the next three prime time evenings. The ground was near-deserted for the game. Ordinary Zimbabweans have more pressing things to worry about, and they don't in general, much go for cricket when they don't. The man who cares is the head of Zimbabwean cricket, Robert Mugabe.

The players had very few safe options left at this point. I'd raise an eyebrow at anyone sitting at a keyboard in New Zealand who'd say they'd be prepared to take a public stand in a country where people simply disappear. I don't believe the players are happy to be there: even if they personally had no problems with the regime, the tension and publicity would make the tour enormously unpleasant. I've never seen Stephen Fleming look as furtive and unhappy as he did walking through the airport in Harare.

I don't think they should be there. But now that they are, in the context of what they can safely do, I think they have delivered a palpable blow to Mugabe through the game he loves, and given the ICC the finger. But to understand that, you'd have to understand cricket. Before you scoff, remember we live in a country where rugby can swing an election result. No, it's not going to change anything in Zimbabwe. But we never had that option.

Bribery, Corruption, and Pragmatism

2005-07-30T14:32:00.000+12:45

I've recovered pretty much completely from the vastness of the student election bribe, and oddly found my experience of it reflected on Tim Barnett's blog today. Disbelief, followed by fine-detail combing, followed by 'well bugger me, it does seem to be as good as it sounds'. Or as Tim says:

True to form this generally somewhat cynical group did not accept it with open arms, but instead examined the fine print and looked for the trick. I can understand their disillusion with politics, so think that initial reaction was fair enough.

Yeah, that'd be it in a nutshell. There's a particular strand in the opposition to the policy (just a strand, mind, they're not all saying this) that says that students aren't doing this, that they're too silly to work out what their loan costs them or how long it takes to pay it back. Just a tip, guys: this probably isn't going to get you any support back from the people you're calling idiots.

Me personally, I HATE being bribed. It really gets my hackles up. But I'm not going to reject a policy that's, IMO, the right thing to do, just because it benefits my family. I'm also not going to reject it because it doesn't go far enough.

I'm a pragmatist, or at least I try to be. One of my little mantras is 'what do I want, what's the best way to go about getting it'. We're not going to get capped loans and universal allowance and loan write-offs all at once. That's simply too big to swallow. It's easier to get people to accept things in small doses. Likewise, I'm a fervent supporter of gay marriage, but I accept civil unions as a stepping stone.

In the spirit of pragmatism, I'll be quite interested to watch the shape of the Labour campaign from here on in, because I do wonder if they know what they're doing. They led out with what, it seems, is their biggest trump. Then they played their apprenticeship card so close to that that hardly anyone noticed. It's the kind of useful but unspectacular policy that people don't take much notice of unless it directly affects them anyway, but still... if it were me, I'd want two more big cards. One for when National's tax policy comes out, and another to close on. The polling is interesting, but infuriates me a little because it's pretty clear, I think, that this election is going to be decided by swingers and undecideds, and you have to dig to find the figures on undecideds, if they're available at all.

And I've been quietly musing on which is the biggest campaign mistake so far, Clark's fluffy makeover for the Australian Women's Weekly, or Don Brash and the stockcar. Both were fairly excrutiating: even the least-involved potential voter knows Helen's not a prom queen and Don's not an ordinary average guy.

More Policy

2005-07-26T21:01:00.000+12:45

Well. I'm not sure, looking at my last post, whether today's Labour tertiary policy makes me looks prescient or a proper charlie. But when I hit the news of the interest write-off at No Right Turn this afternoon in my half hour of peace while Spongebob Squarepants is on, I had a couple of reactions.

The first was exactly the same very rude word my partner used when I pointed him at it. The second was, if it's true.

I am a natural cynic. And surely, it's been fifteen years and a pretty comprehensive change of personnel. Can't I start trusting the Labour Party again? This particular government has a reputation for doing what it says it will. I don't know how accurate that is because I haven't been sitting here for the last six years with a Labour Party manifesto and a highlighter, but that's the general impression.

So, if I get over the air of 'too good to be true' for a moment, which is a struggle, this is good for us. It's also good for an awful lot of people we know, too. Our debt, which is my partners officially, is pretty much $10 000. Now, we're about six years behind most of our contemporaries because my protracted illness meant my partner was out of the workforce. During that time, interest kept accruing. I was lucky with my education: my family was dirt poor and I got a full allowance, and for the first couple of years of study, 10% fees. That meant the money set aside for my education as part of a bequest actually paid for it. I reached a point where I was asked to do a Masters, and I said no, because another year would have meant getting a loan. Like a number of people from my kind of background, I'm violently allergic to getting into debt.

Our situation isn't as bad as some of our friends, who have loans in excess of 60k. Who have loans pressuring them to go back to work after having children. Because you can hear the interest building up. And like most people our age, we know an awful lot of people who live in Sydney.

So, several points out of this.

previous to this, loans deterred some people not so much from study in the first place, but from further study they were capable of, because the weight of debt becomes oppressive.
I don't think, given the way loans are structured now, that it'll lead to a huge increase in borrowing. An awful lot of students borrowed without ever thinking about what it was costing them anyway. They treated the money as if it WAS free.
it works to decrease the gender inequity with loans. I don't see this as a wimmin's issue per se. With us the primary caregiver dicked over in this fashion was male. But that whole feminism thing is a whole other can of worms I don't have room to open right now.
it's demonstrably fairer than National's policy as well as more generous. See point above, and also, the tax rebate is bigger the more you make, ergo the less assistance you need, the more you get. Where people affected by illness and unemployment who don't actually make big bucks out of their degrees catch a break this way. And while Bill English is talking about this giving money to rich people and trying to make my irony filter explode, compared with people the same age, it takes graduates longer to earn more. They sacrifice earning potential to study, and then it takes a while to catch up, which is the period where the interest is building. Not all graduates are rich.
National really have just shafted themselves here. How can they argue? They can't say we can't afford it, because they've just spent weeks saying how much money we've got for a tax cut. They called it a bribe. Okay. WTF is a tax cut? And students must be worth targeting because they already tried it.

So yeah, as far as personal benefit goes? This is big. This is us actually looking at the future and thinking, maybe one day we can own our own home. We weren't taking on a mortgage before the loan was gone. And when the loan is gone, we do GET a tax cut, we change tax codes. And we can look at paying it off as we can, knowing that it will actually get smaller, not just get bigger more slowly.

Yeah. This is big. This is me dithering.

Policy

2005-07-22T13:29:00.000+12:45

Heh, people wondering why women don't seem to be as 'political' as men might like to consider how long it's taken me to get back here during the school holidays.

So, being a student-loaned household, we looked forward to the announcement of National's promised policy eagerly. Not so much for itself, because I couldn't picture them doing anything significant enough to make it worth my while financially to vote for them, but because maybe they could shame/scare Labour into responding with something real.

Well. What a pisser. After the build-up, the policy turns out to be totally meaningless. Who's going to not move to Sydney for a $200 rebate? Our own personal benefit from the policy would be a much smaller rebate than that, and not worth the reduced income on a week by week basis I see coming from a National government, given that we're a family that benefits from Working for Families.

With this, and their childcare rebate, National seemed to have missed the fact that, for ordinary, "mainstream" families, a little bit extra in your pocket every week is a lot handier than a moderate chunk of money at the end of the year. A tax rebate doesn't actually HELP you pay for childcare. So once again, they're actually benefiting the people who need it least.

What would have actually helped us with the student loan burden? Not getting so much debt in the first place. That means a universal allowance, so it's not financially better to be unemployed than studying. A higher repayment threshhold, adjusted for inflation, and no interest incurred until you pass the repayment threshhold. Because if you're making less than $20k a year? You're probably not using your degree.

The one policy of the week that seemed sound and significant was the Greens' drug policy. I don't want my kids carrying a criminal conviction because they had a joint as a teenager. Oh, sorry, because they got CAUGHT, because more than half of New Zealanders have smoked dope. If everyone who'd committed that crime carried a conviction for it, that'd be an awful lot of productive members of society. And me as well. And I inhaled.

Now, this is going to sound awful, but I'm putting my emotions aside for a moment and just being pragmatic. Has anyone seriously considered what'll happen to the poll ratings should David Lange die in the run-up to the election? Because it doesn't seem out of the question.

Really wish the government would stop being coy and just announce the election date. And say, no, we don't want to have it sooner, we have stuff we need to get done first.

Tolerance

2005-07-11T12:13:00.000+12:45

Stuff often amuses me. This morning is a fabulous example of their 'subtle' manipulation. There's a photograph of a Muslim man staring bleakly through a broken window. Below, there's a poll: Is New Zealand becoming a less tolerant and accepting society? Right now it's running at about 65-35 to the 'yes' vote. Less tolerant than when? Thirty years ago when no-one here knew what a mosque was?

Okay, yes, I admit it. While I'm here as a voter rather than a political pundit, what I have in common with the pundits is that sometimes the stupidity of the 'average voter' makes me want to spit. While I'm never going to be swayed by what it says on page 128 of your party's manifesto or notice any policy you can't get media coverage for, at least I don't change my mind on fundamentals every time someone writes a headline.

I loathe the word 'tolerance'. I know this is nitpicky of me, and it doesn't stop me donating to religioustolerance.org. But I'd rather use the word 'acceptance' - tolerance is for things you don't like but can't do anything about. Family Christmases, for instance.

New Zealand is, slowly and stably, becoming a more accepting country. I was raised in a very white town, completely monocultural. My children attend a school that's about 50% pakeha, 25% Samoan, and the rest made up of pretty much anything you can name. Somali, Afghani, Chinese... and the thing is, the kids aren't tolerant of each other. They just don't notice. They don't notice race. It's not a factor.

Unfortunately, in the wake of the mosque vandalism, we're way behind when it comes to religion. Despite the fact that it's illegal to teach religion in state primary schools, they're still singing hymns in assembly, teaching "Easter" as a topic (we were assured this would be balanced by teaching on other religions, that was three years ago, we're still waiting), giving chocolate to children who can correctly answer Bible questions, organising school trips to Bible shows...

"Community" is a really difficult thing to define, intangible, and yet I've never had the slightest doubt that, because our family isn't Christian, we don't quite belong in the school community. At least I was raised in the traditions and can fake it when necessary. I can only imagine how much worse it is for the families at that school who are Hindu, Muslim, Shinto...

A dear friend of mine put it beautifully. Religion belongs in your heart, in your home, and in your church if you have one. But not at school.

And so it begins

2005-07-04T12:53:00.000+12:45

I got a pamphlet from Jim in my letterbox this morning. It seems he wants me to vote for him because they want to raise the drinking age back to 20, and ban party pills and NOs. Gotta say, not a winning strategy in my house.

When my daughter turns 18, I want her to be drinking in a relatively safe environment. Inside pubs and clubs. I said RELATIVELY safe. Safer, for instance, than down a back road in the back of some guy's car like I did when I was... okay, you got me there, 16. When I was in high school the drinking age was 20 but it was never enforced. Yes, as I get older teenagers increasingly look like idiots, but make it 18 and enforce it, and add education. Most other countries manage it. What I would like to see raised is the driving age.

Banning NOs, unbelievably pointless. What does he think those kids are going to do, all give up and go home and start studying? No, as far as I can see, from an ordinary-voter POV, all that the Progressives' drug and alcohol policy has actually done is double the price of my cooking sherry. Bastards.

So. The Greens. Piss me off. I find that on about 80% of issues, they make perfect sense. But they chose to make GE their landmark issue, and they made a hash of it. I don't mean they didn't get votes, they did. But they did it by tossing scientific credibility out the window and indulging in scaremongering.

And then you hit a really serious issue like climate change and alternative energy policies, where you really NEED scientific credibility, and lo, it's gone.

Genetic engineering isn't all toad genes in potatoes like my mother's bumper sticker says. Every time you eat, you're digesting the DNA of other organisms. Humans have been trying to improve on plants and animals as long as we've had agriculture. What GE allows us to do is cut out all the tedious and expensive mucking around cross-breeding things hoping to get the traits you want. You can, for instance, isolate the gene in one strain of apples that provides resistance to black spot, put it in another strain that taste really nice, and then grow those apples without having to spray for the disease - ie organically.

It was the GE policy that stopped me from voting Green last time, even though I agree with most of their policy platforms, and see a party containing some of the most sensible and talented MPs around. They may still get my PARTY vote this time around, but it is actually contingent on them not doing anything pink-bra stupid in the meantime. And if Metiria Turei was standing in Wigram, I'd vote for her.

As I was saying...

2005-07-01T11:29:00.000+12:45

I'm not getting into an argument over climate change on first principles. Look, I have a lot of people to offend here, and if I waste all my time on climate change deniers, I'll never get round to pissing people off over abstinence or intelligent design.

Co-incidentally, the Guardian is featuring special reports on global warming today. They at least seem to have noticed that when it gets warmer people don't actually flourish, they die.

Don Brash's announcement that National would pay NZC's fine for defaulting on the tour to Zimbabwe is unbelievably generous. Literally. I suspect he's looking at the initial $2 million fine, and not the overall costs, which people who actually know what they're talking about put at closer to $40m, given the Indian television rights. But given the nuclear policy gone by lunchtime, taxcuts by Christmas track record of the man, if he promised YOU he wouldn't leave you carrying a $40m can, would you believe him?

It's crystal clear from this that National party "policy" (or at least, pre-election promises which will, I'm dead sure, bear absolutely no resemblance to actual policy) is entirely dictated by opinion polls.

It's the Environment, Stupid

2005-06-28T13:49:00.000+12:45

Heh, yeah, forget it. Thirty seconds on Google told me where Quentin is now: on the Alliance list.

Okay. Issue one for me, this and every election, is the environment. Everything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Any sensible and responsible government should be planning right now for the consequences of global warming and peak oil, if only because those who are prepared have a head start economically. Denmark makes £45m a year from exporting wind technologies they bought from Britain.

When it comes to being green, New Zealand is rather like the US when it comes to democracy. We talk big, as a substitute for actually doing. Auckland has the same rate of public transport usage as Los Angeles. Trouble is, as a country, we've grown up in plenty as far as natural resources, so we're conditioned to waste. Because our population is low by international standards, we're only just starting to hit the real problems that stem from excessive consumption. We've had plenty of opportunity to learn from overseas experience, and we're not doing it.

And of course, I live in Christchurch, and sometimes I go outside at night in winter. In fact, these days you don't even have to go outside to chew the smog. Tackling air pollution has basically been left to local government, and here that means the council whining because the 'new' protocols mean they may have to shut down the coal-fired furnace they use to heat their own offices. Yes, coal fires are banned, but only for private individuals.

One thing Christchurch does have right is curbside recycling. But the thing is, strategies like that really have to be implemented nationally, not just patchwork by large urban areas than happen to currently have a lefty council. And there's no point in picking the stuff up if you don't encourage businesses that actually USE it.

In a way I'm kind of interested by the intellectual exercise of trying to work out what is going to happen to New Zealand as a result of global warming. I mean, ignoring the people still faffing around saying, We don't know enough, and what we want to do about that is not find out anything. We do know. We know what's happening, we know what causes it, the only surprise has been how fast it's happening. Trying to plan for the future by debating first principles of global warming is a bit like trying to plan a circumnavigation of the globe with the Flat Earth Society.

Wellington. Higher sea levels and increased precipitation, snow as well as rain. That means more days like we've had occasionally over the last couple of years, when you can't actually get into or out of Wellington because of the weather. It's time, right now, to start thinking about what happens if you can't actually use both the road and rail lines into Wellington that run right along the shore. Is it time for sea walls?

Energy efficiency. It's kind of interesting watching the debate on the 'energy crisis' in New Zealand, because it goes like this. Well, people should conserve energy. Oh, absolutely they should, now here's what we want to do when they don't. And that's it for conservation. Last year, it seemed to be awfully important to slow down the housing market. Surely that would have been the perfect time for the government to say okay, every new house built has to have solar hot water, and has to reach a certain standard of energy efficiency. Yes, that would make new houses more expensive. Wasn't that the point? This year's British White Paper on alternative energy said, among other things, that if you put solar panels on every roof in Britain (previously entirely wasted space), they'd become net producers of energy. It would satisfy all of Britain's energy needs and then some, entirely cleanly. Why yes, it would be expensive. All energy solutions are expensive. Yes, I'm aware solar panels have to be replaced every decade or so. I don't know how many solar panels you could make for the price of a hydro dam, but I'm thinking it's somewhere around 'fuckloads'.

There's only one way to change human behaviour when it comes to the environment. It's rather like smoking: we know what we do is bad, for us, for the people around us, just in general, but we like it, so we're not going to stop. What it takes is a combination of financial incentives and disincentives, (if you're going to increase the price of petrol, then you have to have public transport alternatives in place and subsidies for hybrid cars, for instance), and government regulation.

And we need to have centralised planning (Commies! Commies commies commies!) in place to deal with the forseeable consequences of environmental change. New Zealand, for instance, is going to be one of the countries hit with environmental refugees, as Pacific Islands start literally disappearing. When your whole country is half a mile wide and less than a metre above sea level and the tide comes two metres further up the beach than it did last year, global warming is more than an interesting theory.

This'll be followed at some stage by 'why I'm reluctant to vote for the Greens'.

Nearly there, I swear

2005-06-27T12:50:00.000+12:45

Turns out I still have some house-keeping stuff to do before I really start.

I'm not trying to tell anyone how to vote. I don't do that. Well, okay, once I talked a guy into voting for MMP, in the car on the way to the polling booth. But I once dated him for two years, and he owed me. I'm just trying to work through my own indecision. See, what Idiot/Savant said today about voting for Jim makes a lot of sense. In fact, I couldn't have said it more identically. Tactically, voting for Jim actually kind of works. I just really, really don't want to do it. I want to be inspired to vote for something I want, without the nose-holding. That's what it's all about.

And in the 'why I care about what I do' post, I should have mentioned the health issues. After the birth of my second child, I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Immune Disorder Syndrome, what used to be called Tapanui 'flu here. For six years, my partner stayed home and raised our kids because I was too ill to do so. Then we found our daughter was hearing impaired. So, this has meant solid years of dealing with waiting lists, idiotic medical "professionals", ORS funding, WINZ nazis, and the kind of 'concerned individuals' who call the cops every time they see a man in the park with a little girl. It's put us in the rather odd position of being well-educated but dirt-poor, and particularly aware of how full of crap that 'if you work hard you'll get ahead' line is.

span(ner in the works) has me intrigued. I seem to be rapidly acquiring a sort of refuge for ex-youth committee people. And if you had any idea what happened to Quentin Findlay I'd be really grateful to hear.

Who am I?

2005-06-26T13:32:00.000+12:45

Holy kudos, Batman, two days and I've already been noticed by the Blogosphere, at no less of a level than No Right Turn. This will definitely mean some hours blowing off both housework and real work getting something credible up today.

In order to talk about what's important to me politically, I have to talk about some personal stuff. See, I don't see any division between the personal and the political. The things that are important to me are important because of stuff that's happened to me and the environment I was brought up in. Yes, I am concerned about global issues that don't immediately touch me personally, but I believe given time things like poverty reduction and peak oil will shape the world my kids and I live in, so even the big issues are personal.

I'm in my thirties, female, liberal, well-educated, Pakeha, bisexual, and a Wiccan. I'm mostly a stay-at-home Mum, though I work part-time over the net. I'm an environmentalist, a pacifist, and a socialist. I was raised pretty poor, by a solo mum who was a member of the Values party, in a very white conservative town. My earliest political experiences were Hiroshima Day marches and Aromoana smelter protests.

I joined the Labour Party when I was fifteen. That was 1987. We drank in pubs with photos of Michael Joseph Savage hanging over the bar. At sixteen, I was the Aorangi regional rep on the Labour Youth Council. I got a lot more out of that than they got out of me. Hanging out with uni students listening to Billy Bragg and discussing Nicaragua; it was heady stuff. I also got an insight at a very early age into how the parliamentary process actually worked, the kind of hoops MPs have to jump through with the beaurocracy to actually get anything done. At the time, it was quite disillusioning. The Council was, unlike the parliamentary Labour Party at that time, very left-wing. And our personal hero through the Rogernomics years?

Jim Anderton.

In 1989, Jim quit the Labour Party to form New Labour. We called an emergency meeting, flew everyone to Auckland, and there was a bitter and partially drunken debate. Were we best fighting for change from the outside, or the inside? In the end, about half the council quit, and that was the half I was with. Unlike most of the others, though, I didn't join New Labour. I needed a break, I needed to sit back and watch and think for a while. Even then, there were things that made me uneasy.

Ever since, while I'm still a political person and someone who enjoys the debate, the issues, and trying to work out, for instance, WTF John Tamihere's plan is, I've stayed away from parties, campaigning, formal politics. I did some informal campaigning for the change to MMP, on the basis of a stage one POL SCI paper, and I've never regretted that, I think it's been enormously beneficial. I've never voted for the party I used to belong to. It may be nearly twenty years later, but I just don't trust Labour. And these days, I don't trust Jim any more either. What does he stand for? Tax cuts and supporting the war in Iraq? What the hell happened?

What I am, is a natural Alliance voter who now finds themselves without a home. I'm an idealist, yes, but I'm not naive. It's a rather odd and almost frightening situation for me, to feel that I don't know who to vote for, for the decision to not be a total no-brainer.

What next? A brief run-down, I think, on the issues that really matter to me, and where the parties are on those.

Why am I here?

2005-06-25T14:04:00.000+12:45

Okay, my purpose here should be fairly obvious: reflecting the run-up to the election from my little place in the world. Why does it matter? Well, it doesn't, not really, that's the joy of blogging.

But the thing about living in Wigram is that, much like living in Tauranga, you get completely taken for granted. Everyone, politicians, media, the blogosphere, just assume that the electorate is one massive amorphous blob that only exists to ensure that That Bastard the sitting MP will never, ever get turfed out of Parliament no matter what. In many ways, campaigning rather passes us by, and I'm willing to bet that by September, there'll be a few people in Wellington Central to whom that'd sound like heaven. If it weren't for MMP, my vote would be completely pointless.

Ironically, I should be perfect Anderton-vote territory. I'll look at why in the next post. But I don't WANT to vote for him, and what I really want is for someone to give me a really good reason to vote for them instead. Last time round I voted for the Alliance candidate who stood against Jim because, man, you gotta reward balls, right? What am I going to do this time? I don't know yet. Watch and see. The only thing I do know is, I'm not voting for Jim.

Fresh Fields

2005-06-24T12:45:00.000+12:45

After much dithering, I've gone and done it, as you can tell. Until the election, I'm moving my political posting off Xanga and over here. Those of you looking for the gossip, child-related blathering and role-playing waffle should be here. Those of you who just appreciate the blend of cogent, impassioned, and bitchy are in the right place.

While this is going to be very much about New Zealand in general, Christchurch in particular, and Wigram even more particularly than that, I'm really hoping that some of my English, Canadian, American etc readers will make the jump over. I got personal about your elections: now it's payback time. The kicker being that, of course, no-one really cares what happens here. But one of the things I'm hoping to provide is a window into a peculiar little country with lots of political options, that holds its elections on Saturdays, and doesn't allow campaigning on election day, let alone people ramming 'how to vote' pamphlets in your face as you try to fight your way to the polling booth.