We should only use STV in electorates which are sized to have more than one winner. STV is a very bad single-winner voting system.
No. Oh, sorry, I was supposed to read the post first? Okay. Let's see: If Labour doesn't want the spoiler effect in electorates, that's a matter for electoral reform and needs to be kicked to the Electoral Commission or brought to a referendum. (I endorse ...
I doubt it's politicization, to be honest. It's more likely an issue of us not making official information accessible to the public, and making personal information WAY TOO accessible for people who don't need it without reasonable audit practices. The ...
They don't even need to be right-wing contacts. They can just be credulous public servants, or she could have a manager who's a personal friend that isn't even political. If you have a semi-credible need for information that isn't going to end up in media ...
Yep. Implies it's a case of: "oh, it will be easier to deal with what Boag needs by just giving her inappropriate access to too much data, but we can't do that officially, so we'll use our private addresses to provide her access to an unsecured data dump."...
There's massive calls from even centrists wanting Walker's and Boag's heads. I'm not sure this is survivable for them in their current roles, although there's the possibility that Muller's position is so weak he can't force Walker to resign, which is ...
It could also legitimately be that the info is poorly secured, but if so, that's even less of an excuse for how Walker acted: it's much easier to just score points by embarassing the government by showing you have access to information you shouldn't, and ...
Which isn't really particularly good. Combine that with the fact that Walker has not yet resigned and it gives the impression that he has no control over his caucus. If he can't require a resignation for this, what use is he, even as a patsy leader?
Boag is certainly the proximate source if not the original source, and claims to have had access to it in her role as CEO of the rescue helicopter trust. This is slightly dubious: while she may be an authorized recipient, she was probably not a rightfully ...
Yep. Genuine gold star for all media personnel who had access and did the right thing. They are the real MVPs of this story, although Chris Hipkins has also definitely shown why he's warming that ministerial seat right now.
No, it's not spiteful. I am deeply frustrated at Labour for fostering a culture of appointing unqualified people as Ministers (one hopes it's due to inadequacies in the decision-making process around who gets into Cabinet, which isn't Ardern's, but still, ...
In general you are correct. Health, like AG, has a lot of issues for someone who has no strong medical background that need to be strongly compensated for with good managerial practice and ability to critically listen to subordinates. There's a reason why ...
Yeah to be fair "comes online" in this case means "is ready to be a Minister." I don't expect either Hipkins or Wood to be there too long, but yes, I would expect they're looking to make one of their two newly acquired doctors the Associate immediately ...
I actually support Muller in this, though. It's better for all of us if National actually is just up-front and asks what it means. Sure, it puts Ministers on notice and potentially misses issues that they didn't know about when questions were submitted, ...
Not politicising drug funding was a good move, IMO, and it's something we need to make a political consensus again if we can. As much as I want effective cancer treatment for everyone, I would prefer if cancer were treated in line with its actual level of ...
The problem is something of the reverse: It's considered too senior to have a junior minister, and most of the "senior talent" in the Party is not in fact talent, as they were clearly expecting not to go into government until this term when they made their...
Good. He wasn't competent to hold his portfolio, and Hipkins can warm his seat until their clearly intended replacement, Dr Varrell, comes online next term. Ardern and Labour in general should hold strong against calls to reappoint him "for good behaviour"...
alternatively: a) He can do maths, but is such a moron he can't recognize the language that indicates tax policy relies on marginal thresholds. b) He can both do the maths and is qualified to be finance minister because he recognizes the language regarding...
Yep, gives them an incentive to make sure all their investments are expected to return more than 2% profit over the time period they have them, which should increase the productivity of our millionaires. ;)
It's certainly undefined for people who are reliant on capital assets for income such as owner-operator farmers, who might need some sort of carve out, but for individuals near the end of their life thinking about retirement options, it might actually be ...
Right, so a pretty big boost to the threshold, and a small decrease to the rate. Sounds pretty good.
It's a bit sad too, as this policy demonstrably won't affect normal middle-class families. Hell, even upper-middle or lower-tenth decile families won't be effected under estimates, just the top 6% most wealthy kiwis in terms of non-household assets.
While I'm normally in favour of error or mistake as the default assumption for political screw-ups, I'd caution that there is a LONG history of malicious misinterpretation of other parties' more progressive policies from National finance spokespeople, so ...
People who are wealthy because they're successful are earning far more than a 1% or 2% return on investment. This doesn't penalize success. It taxes assets at a threshold where they are most likely providing a significant capital return, so it's fair to ...
It could also be manageable with moderate support but being the only path to Government for Labour. I know I'll be treating progress towards this policy in the agreement as a bottom line, specifically everything that's brought over from the WEAG report is ...
Nope, haven't looked into it in detail, just ran into someone not understanding that there would be abatement to part-time work on Twitter, and had the rates dropped on me by Ricardo Menéndez-March when I said they weren't in the press release but there ...
Correct. Shaw literally can't railroad through a coalition deal the members don't support. It requires local branches to support the deal on behalf of their members- so basically, you need 75% of branch delegates to support the deal, which means 75% of ...
I mean, your interest levels would need to be sub-2% for it to ever be worth delaying paying down a mortgage, surely? More it might incentivize you on the margins to spend on normal household assets that depreciate that are exempt, such as a new car. ...
If you own a $850k property on your own without a mortgage, you're pretty well off, and it's not unreasonable to pay a tax if you also manage to save more than $150k for retirement. Remember, if you have $1001,000 of assets, you pay $10 of tax, so it's ...
This is not true. Polls indicate the likely options right now are an outright Labour government or a Labour-Green government. All other things equal, the results will narrow a bit more before the election, most likely, but at current support levels there ...
The examples actually also make it clear that people without fixed incomes can also defer if for example they have a low-income year. It seems a pretty fair way to handle things.
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