You can only vote in the 2013 Citizens Initiated Referendum if you are enrolled before voting starts on 22 November. If you are enrolled by Thursday 21 November you will be sent your voting paper in the mail.
Not enrolled? Do it here now.
You should receive your voting paper by Friday 29 November.
You can also check your current enrollment here.
Now obviously I’d like you to vote against
“Do you support the Government selling up to 49% of Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Power, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand?”
The main reason for having this referendum is (in my view) because the munters who make up the shrill chorus of apologists for these sales have been saying that any vote for National and it’s allies was solely a vote for wholesale intergenerational theft by themselves.
According to the strange people who cheer for National, somehow everyone who voted for National also voted for selling our laws to SkyCity to spread gambling. They also voted for creating the largest debt by the government to pass to future generations. The cessation of affordable house building was obviously also in their plans for a National government…
Bullshit. The reality is quite different. People vote for political parties for many reasons including the simple fact that they don’t like the other options. Trying to throw a mantle of “mandate” over a single policy by a minority party in parliament whose actual vote was only just over 30% of the voting public is simple-minded lying. There were nearly 3 million on the roll at writ day in 2011, only just over 1 million voted for the National party who had the policy of selling public assets to their wealthy mates.
We may not immediately be able to stop the theft of these assets from future generations by the National government by voting against in this referendum. But we can certainly point out that these arseholes did not have support to do it, and send a clear message to the thieves that they can (at least) expect some significiant regulation of such pseudo monopolies.
But more importantly we can shove the lie of “mandate” straight back into this National government’s lying face.
... 
Amen!
Well said. Voting on this referendum is taking part in making an important, and highly visible, statement.
Voting on this is important because whichever view you hold it is not often we get to speak directly to our elected representatives. Am using facebook to urge my nephews and their friends to make sure they are enrolled and to vote for their own future.
Part of me thinks NATs sold AirNZ so people would go “the referendum is irrelevant now cos they are going to sell anyway” and then Nats can smirk and say we told you we had a mandate, people didnt even bother to vote.
its a gamble that i think will backfire – badly
they know most NZers are against the sale and doing this would look very much like a big “fuck you” to all those people and probably many more who might have been on the fence.
theres a line somewhere that if crossed the public will react to in massive numbers – its how we kind of do things i guess
the question is have they crossed that line
We may not immediately be able to stop the theft of these assets…
Stop calling it theft. They are being sold. The purchasers are paying money.
they are being sold by the owners representatives against the wishes of the majority of owners
sounds like theft to me
do you think i could use the line of “but i paid for it” if the cops found my house full of stolen flat screens?
massive logic fail there barrell – the money changing hands is irrelevant to whether something has been stolen or not
“Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen”
Why? I just describe it exactly as I see it.
The assets “sold” so far have been considerably undervalued relative to their utility. In fact they have been far far below the initial valuations that the government had for them. It is almost as if the National government was handing them out deliberately well below their value..
I’d call that theft, specifically from the future generations who will probably have to pay to get them back again. Just look at what happened last time that Air NZ was sold to some cowboys of bad business. Within 12 years it had to be bailed out simply to provide the airfreight capacity that we require to run our export businesses.
I stole a loaf of bread this morning. Put a stocking on my head, paid the guy at the dairy $4 and then I just legged it.
And you are allowed to vote? WTF do they let you vote for? You should be in an asylum. Anyone who robs a dairy and pays for what they stole needs psychiatric evaluation.
profiling a troll, hey now that could be a Phd thesis to sit alongside other work on sociopaths.
Well ole if granny can pass off smellstrong’s article today as unbiased political commentary with lines like ‘The credibility of those parties – Labour, the Greens and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand First – is on the line…’ then theft seems a very plausible explanation.
But then you probably have another opinion to choose from your handlers, you could go with ‘Clearance Sale’ or ‘Bargain Basement’ if you compare price with value.
A sale agreement requires a willing seller as well as a willing buyer.
There is really only one part of this equation in these sales of public assets (the greedy buyers who what it all.) So if you take a child’s favourite toy from them, and give them a dollar in return; is that not theft?
Yes. Let’s ignore the 2011 election. Because it doesn’t suit us.
The dairy owner says you still owe him 36c for the loaf of bread you stole earlier and paid him only $4 for. Also he wants you to return for your cellphone.
Gangsta!
I also did my laundry but I didn’t fold it all properly.
Of course you didn’t, fool. You’re still wearing that stocking on your head and can’t see properly.
why not, ignoring fact and evidence is par for the NACT course.
What Cullen and Clark said about Taito Phillip field
“He works harder on those matters than I suspect the entire National Party caucus does on constituency cases. If that is what he is guilty of, then I am sure he is happy to plead guilty to working hard on behalf of his constituents.“
“the only thing of which Taito Philip Field is guilty is being helpful.”
also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_Zealand_election_funding_controversy
Just so I can’t accused of being biased 🙂
Yup, they said that right up until the evidence was beyond dispute at which point he got thrown out of the party. Accusations do not make a person guilty no matter how much the RWNJs wish that they did.
Still, can’t see what this has to do with the thread at all.
” Let’s ignore the 2011 election”
yes lets – it was a mandate to form a government – it wasn’t a mandate to steal.
does an election win (which national didnt get) mean that any policy you announced during the campaign gets a free pass round the democratic process or not?
considering that the MOM bill was in fact debated and voted on points to the answer being a resounding “of course not”
so – it cant be both because they contradict each other – so which is it? Cmon all you “but they got a mandate” champions. Explain the contradiction
and for bonus points what would happen in the unlikely event that a policy announced during the campaign fails to pass because enough MPs voted against it, what happens then?
It was announced, but didnt gain enough support via our democratic system. What then?
To enact the bill anyway is going against the democratic result, to not enact it is to break an election promise.
The claim that wining an election gives you an automatic mandate to pass a bill into law is utter nonsense
@tgffkao
They are being taken from their OWNERS. US.
They are being sold against the OWNERS (US) wishes.
Therefore it’s theft, plain and simple.
What right do I have as an owner ?
So the police proof of ownership and lay a charge then
Well now – there is a pretty thought!
Or we can wait until the next election when National is re-elected… 🙂
do you write adds for tui?
Yeah naah
I don’t think anyone is saying that the mythological mums and dads (aka local and international investment funds + rich minority investors) are stealing. They are in it fit themselves and getting more than their fair share of what has unt now been a shared asset, but they are at best accomplises. The theft is being perpetrated by the representatives if this generation who are selling of resources that they should be able to pass on to the next, and who are taking shared resources and ‘privatising’ (ie, taking from the poor, who unt now have shared in the ongoing profits, and passing those profits on to their mates). And yes, I know the word ‘representatives’ is in that sentence, but it’s naive to argue that Nat were elected to sell assets. They were elected for all sorts of reasons – earthquakes, GFC, issues with Labour, dodgy deals, the fact that single term governments are very unusual in NZ… Besides, there’s nothing wrong with people telling their supposed reps which policies we are opposed to. I’m certainly going to be voting and trying to encourage others to do the same.
THIS GOVT IS RUNNING ROUGH SHOD OVER THE PEOPLE THEY ARE MEANT TO REPRESENT..WHY IS IT WHEN I AM ALREADY ON THE ELECTORAL ROLL DO I HAVE TO RE ENROLL FOR A REFERENDUM?..THE OUTCOME OF THIS IS TO LEAVE PEOPLE POWERLESS.
MIND YOU …TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE UK AS REPORTED ON THE BBC..HOW LONG WILL IT BE BEFORE THE NATIONAL PARTY DECIDE TO WIPE ALL THEIR PROMISES AND SPEECHES AND POLICIES FROM THE INTERNET?….WITH THE THOUGHT THAT IN A FEW WEEKS ITS ALL GONE AND FORGOTTEN.SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO ISN’T IT?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24924185
ARE YOU THINKING WHAT I AM THINKING?…IF ONLY I COULD ERASE THE MEMORY OF THIS GOVT…UNFORTUNATELY MEANWHILE THEY SELL US DOWN THE RIVER
[I can understand the anger but can we hit the caps lock button? MS]
Why are you yelling?
And, if you’re already enrolled, then you don’t need to enroll.
Regarding the above comment. If your correct in whats occuring in the Facist UK and that it could be heading our way. HOW CAN I THINK WHAT YOUR THINKING? WHEN OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY HAS BEEN PURGED BY NATIONAL? How can I tell a promise, pledge, guarantee has been broken when I cant find it? Re writing/purging History so that it fits Nationals Future? Say It Aint So Mate! If It Is, My Name is Winston Smith!
I cant help it if i type for the near sighted..they too have rights.
[karol: fixed]
i cant help it too! as my caps locked is knackered..keyboards are not just for xmas & have rights too apprently, yet not under national, for that too will be banned or sold!
[karol: it seems to be catchy]
If it is theft, will a Labour government take it back? That is, renationalise it. No. They are happy to go along with the neoliberal agenda in the end.
BTW NZ spelling is ‘enrol’ as a verb.
If I have my envelope postmarked today will I be able to be enrolled for the upcoming referendum on asset sales? It may take awhile for the forms to get there. I’m mailing off my enrollment forms today.
With New Zealand Post? You’d have to have sent in the enrolment back in 2008…
EDIT: I should add that it’s not that the post office is a bad business, purely the fact that they’ve been massively under-resourced and have some crazy requirement to at least break even while having statutory requirements that the overseas-owned competition do not have.
The real value of the referendum seems to have been missed by most commentators.
A strong vote against in the referendum, will make future Governments hesitate before they sell the remaining 51% in public hands.
Does anyone really think they will not have another go when the furore has died down?
When there is still 51% left to steal.
They waited patiently for decades, for the memory of the disaster that was the last round of asset sales, to be forgotten, to steal more of our assets.
Yep. People know that selling our assets has left us worse off and they don’t want it to happen again. They tried the but it’s only 49% BS but people aren’t that stupid.
I supported the petition and the referendum, but I’m horrified at how biased the electoral commission has allowed the voting form to be. I would have been failed in my social research undergrad work if I had presented that voting form as a viable measure of public belief!
A person for whom English is a second language and who perhaps comes from a less democratic society than NZ, could well get the idea that “Vote for only one answer” with an arrow pointing directly to and in close proximity to the YES box, means that this is the box it is in their best interest to mark. Also the word ‘vote’ rather than ‘tick’ leaves the possibility that a person may put a cross in the box they don’t want, and if the Electoral Act is followed, this could be construed as the voter having made their intentions obvious – one way or the other depending on the biases of any human checking of ambiguous votes following electronic counting. But more likely using anything other than a tick would (wrongly) ensure the disallowing of the vote. “Tick only one answer” would have overcome that sort of ambiguity.
The arrow below the example box is unneccessary, as well as being misleading, because it is clear that the ticked box is the same shape and pattern as the two voting boxes. A person of average intelligence, regardless of how good their English may be, would get that.
I also believe that John Key should be taken to task for blatantly acknowledging during the week the voting papers went out, that his government will ignore the referendum results, thus overtly skewing voters towards the perception that voting is a waste of time. What sort of a democracy allows such overt pressure?
I hope I’m not alone in seeing the bias in the voting form and that y’all will explain the bias, and of course (showing mine), encourage those around you who may not be as politically savvy as others of us, to understand how the form actually works and how to vote NO!
Maddy