Yes. I am disheartened by the financial support the far right has. I’m surprised Labour hasn’t tried to fight this battle, personally. They can’t think they’d ever attract that funding from those particular funders themselves, so why hold back?

Fair enough. Hence why I’ve been arguing to retain the party vote system under my proposed tinkering rather than moving to electorates only.

I agree that Goldsmith now has too many portfolios and you’re right about how this imperils good governance. It seems to me though that National already has options within its existing caucus and doesn’t need more MPs if the goal is simply to distribute the workload. This is more of a choice from the prime minister about how he delegates work and voters can decide what they think about it, I guess.

Labour was similar, as I recall — there were a few ‘super ministers’ in charge of a lot.

I take your point regarding gerrymandering. It’s not quite the right word. Replace it with a word that means ‘made to vote in elections where my vote will not materially affect the outcome whereas under the current system it can’, if you like.

Kind of. I’m not suggesting a move from MMP.

That’s an interesting perspective given that some parties have held their seats for decades. Do you really think the parties have earned trust or that some people just vote for them out of habit?

I take a ‘build it and they will come’ approach: I think that if it is possible to actually get in, the minor parties will be able to consistently find better candidates who are willing to invest the time. Right now there is often no point, except for the top of the party list.

If you really think that minor parties place the country at risk I guess you’d be in favour of electoral systems that reduce their chances of getting in.

I hadn’t considered that the rising population might be an issue that people would like to address here. I know it’s been a concern in the US in the House. For me I’m comfortable with having 120 MPs as I don’t want to pay more MP salaries. I can understand why other people might think otherwise.

I’m also reluctant to dump the party vote system. I’m in the regions and my politics are out of step with pretty much everyone around me. With the party vote system I can vote for the party of my choice and know that my vote counts towards their final total. If it were done with an electorate only, my voice would be gerrymandered into not being heard at all, even with smaller electorates.

That’s true.

That’s hearty National territory there. Be interesting to see if the electorate has slipped further right-wing though; NZ First and ACT might appeal more to any new true believers.

Yeah, that’s where I was going with that. I kind of get it as I’m in the regions and our population is low enough that our roads suck and are expected to suck in perpetuity. Seems the Govt. is mostly fascinated by trying to grow the infrastructure of Hamilton and Auckland.

How many new motorways has the north island had compared to the South Island?

That’s interesting about Taupo. The demand must get pretty high around holiday season! I wonder what the threshold is for setting up air traffic control.

Edit: this was meant to be a reply to Dave, but I must have pushed the wrong button. Lemmy has been acting a little strange for me tonight though…

Yes — I’d say your impression of the situation is right.

I see your library of Alexandria and raise you the Tower of Babel, which as we all know, came crashing down… I wonder for how long society will let the AI companies build their massive edifices.

Edit: upon checking my bible stories, ‘crashing down’ is not quite the right description of what happened with the Tower, but that’s not really the main point.

This is sad. Good on the shopkeeper for cancelling the orders.

It’s also astounding that the quest for information to subsume is so relentless that AI companies are now after niche books about little old NZ.

(Forgive the old news article — it’s just to stir discussion.)

It’s a nice idea. I think the general population doesn’t care enough to make it a political cause, sadly.

I hope the retired racers find good homes. They make sweet pets. Some are a bit funny in the head though, as their upbringing is so unnatural.

Seems that this is an off-the-cuff comment. Wonder what the MPs in the National caucus are thinking.

From speaking to people in real life who have told me they’re considering TOP, it seems like a lot of this sentiment is coming from disenchantment with the established parties and a mood to change.

Luxon’s clearly weak with no principles, and act and NZ First are extreme in their own ways. Ordinary people don’t like the government cutting funding for health or school lunches, and there’s a whiff of white supremacy around the current government with the anti-Te Reo bent that they’ve adopted and Winston’s recent comments about the Chinese. Add to that the persistently gloomy economy and is easy to want a change from the current lot.

What will be a concern for Labour is that people don’t see them as a viable alternative, and rightly or wrongly I think that is because people are not particularly enamoured with Chris Hipkins. To me he seems like a competent politician, but he doesn’t have the sparkle that Jacinda did when she first came into power and convinced people that change for the better was possible. That’s the niche that TOP seems to be capturing to some extent.

Greens and TPM are niche enough that I don’t think they’ll expand their slices of the voting pie much, and I say this as a Green voter who would like to see the party polling better.

I wonder who TOP voters are hoping will end up in power?

I’m not surprised by this news at all.

I’m not too sure how different this is from the status quo, except maybe it technically removes some discretion from school in cases of assault — though I think schools would suspend kids for gross misconduct in those circumstances anyway, which they are already empowered to do.

I think ACT has really just found a way to bang the law and order drum, while appealing to their voters who think that the education system is woke and useless, and slipping in the dog-whistle of schools being full of misbehaving ‘little shits’: guess who they mean by that.