New Zealanders will soon be able to cast a vote while grocery shopping but the Opposition says the Government is rushing the changes to advantage its own re-election.
Justice Minister Andrew Little announced changes on Thursday that will see voters gaining the right to enrol on election day at next year’s general election, and allowing ballot boxes to be placed in supermarkets and malls to make it easier for people to vote.
The Justice Select Committee is currently holding an Inquiry into the 2017 General Election, where it has been advised by the Electoral Commission.
Little said the committee would run out of time to enact any changes to make voting easier, so the Government gave the green light to recommendations that were not particularly controversial, he said.
National’s electoral law spokesman Nick Smith said that was a poor excuse and the changes were a “stitch-up”.
“If the minister was concerned about the timetable, he could have asked the committee, at any stage in the past18 months, to address the issues quicker.
He believed the three parties in Government had cherry picked Electoral Commission recommendations with the objection of making it easier.
“We know from advice that if you allow same day enrolment and voting, that tends to favour parties of the left. The international vote, as we saw in the 2017 final count, tended to favour parties like the Greens.”
Dear Nick Smith.
Shut up.
You sad National Party toad, your legacy of ineptitude and falsehoods deprives you of any moral high ground. Nick tries to claim that the Electoral Commission didn’t want same day enrolments, which is not true, they wanted them for 2023, but the Government brought that forward.
Trying to conflate that difference to opposition is a sad joke that only tired old National Party hacks try and pull off.
Making it easier to enrol and easier to vote on election day is exactly what makes a democracy strong and inclusive, listening to the National Party trying to champion exclusion as a democratic value is as hollow as their ethics.
Great move by the Government.
What’s your problem Nick” Surely you would be confident that allowing more opportunity for the people to vote would be good for National? Or should only the areas where National changed the electoral boundaries be the ones that count?
Fuc off Nik, you’ve had your time!
I am a bit sciptical about increasing voting booths like I am sciptical about broken promises. Y’know the politicians shows up with election brides then after they’re like “what CGT?”
So I think votes can be increased and I think they can be destroyed. I would first like to see a plastic buy back program so we have clean plastic to put back into the market with collection stations everywhere that gives you money for recycling.
And while we are at increasing voting booths everywhere.
True Sam so we need to get labour to move on plastic big time now.
Tyres are made from plastic too so get the trucks off the roads and use rail with those steel wheels on steel tracks and lots of less plastic dust particles will be entering our water system and seas.
“Tyre dust is another plastic pollution hazard”.
Read this;http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1906/S00241/tyre-dust-is-another-plastic-pollution-hazard.htm
Press release. Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre. 20/6/19.
Environment.
In a Ministry of Transport official documented study released shows that tyre wear from a truck is at least 100 times more than an average car.
https://transport.govt.nz/assets/Import/Documents/9fa2b3a10b/stormwater-emission-factors.pdf
• In a corner stone report released, by the ‘Government’s Principal transport advisory agency’ the Ministry of Transport entitled ‘Emission Factors for Contaminant s Released by Motor Vehicles in New Zealand’ it clearly shows graphs and tables confirming our worst fears that surfaces of rough surface roads will increase the tyre to road ‘friction’ that will greatly increase the tyre wear and tyre dust ‘emissions’ from all tyres if the roads are made from a chip seal or worse from metal or gravel road surface.
The tables and literature shows that as the weight of the freight carried on trucks increases the tyre dust emissions increases dramatically.
We have located documents that show that scientists have now found traces of tyre dust being carried on sea tidal currents to the polar ice and are now speeding up the melting of the ice caps, due to the black tyre dust attracting the suns heat.
Ministry of Transport. – ‘Emission Factors for Contaminant s Released by Motor Vehicles in New Zealand’ is a serious wake up call to our regional Governments who are now beginning to write changes and intent to their future planning to reduce the climate emissions after signing the ‘Climate change emergency declaration.’
Our HB Regional Council are also signing onto this climate change emergency declaration; http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1906/S00449/hawkes-bay-support-for-climate-emergency-declaration.htm
Rail is the answer as “steel wheels on a steel track” has no friction or tyre dust emissions and therefore is the ‘environmental gold standard’ for our future economic growth of our regions increased business development to avoid any increase harm to our environment or climate.
Yeah – rubber too. We need a price on pollution and that and recycling would be part of it.
Rail with wood fired steam driven engines.
The latest Kiwi development for a low tech least polluting immediate solution.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201851082/could-the-age-of-the-steam-train-return
Based on decades of development in South America with Kiwi twist
Could be a goer. Y’know if you put a carbon nano filter on a steam locos chimney stack with at least 80% clean air. Singapore has a rubbish incinerated that achieves 99% clean air and they leave that on 24/7. So it isn’t a silly option.
What is it about National? Are they so perfectly arrogant that they think they have an answer for EVERYTHING?
What the Hell was Nick Smith swilling this time for him to come up with this GEM????!!!!!
Is National so frightened by the fact that low income NZers who go to supermarkets to shop will vote in favour of the current government more so than ever before? Meaning why is National so scared of a democracy and allowing everyone of voting age to vote?
I am sure even wealthier people go to the supermarket to shop and I am sure a great number of wealthy people didn’t bother voting in previous elections especially during a National government!
I guess we will see Nick Smith turn up at his local supermarket to show the accompanying media a possible housing estate.
But all in all it’s time for the older and more useless National MPs to quietly disappear into their NZ Taxpayer funded super-superannuation retirements. Nick Smith had his day in the sun for far too long. He is a Has-been just like John Key and Bill English. If National want votes from particularly the younger voting and shopping in supermarkets population they need to have younger blood in their ranks. Not freeloaders of which the National Party senior team seem to hold onto.
I as a low income NZer would probably much prefer to vote at the local supermarket than go to the voting area at the local community centre. At the last election I was not too impressed with where the voting rooms were because one had to go up stairs to get there. No elevator service for the disabled in that building. At least at the local supermarket there are no steps and it’s easy access for the disabled.
national be leave they are entitled to power and privilege and poor people interfere with that right
Yeah we now have Key openly admitting he would’ve just changed the flag instead of a referendum if he had his time over. So much for the democratic process!
Bronwyn Pullar liked this post
If james shaw can green ( pardon the pun) light anyone with a cell phone to be tracked hourly by the Dept of Stats why then isn’t voting compulsory to off-set that kind of arrogance?
You will be tracked!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/392411/stats-nz-phone-companies-to-track-people-s-movements
I’ve stood by and watched people painfully count out cash to buy their groceries in the robotic, rort-machines that super markets are and they sometimes have to shamefully return relatively unnecessary items so as to be able to keep to their cash budget. Does the gubbimint really, actually think those people are then going to vote as they come or go? For the same scum who watch down on those shoppers as they try to scrimp and save knowing full well, that those same scum foisted a 15% GST on essential items like food FFS, while giving tax breaks to the very riche and allowing banks to take $555 million dollars profit away over a six month period? What the fuck is that about jacinda?
No wonder dave the lizard’s smiling.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/388562/westpac-nz-makes-555m-profit-in-six-months
We should all be voting during the day, during the week and it should be a paid day off and we should all, of voting age, have to vote. As a democratic society where we must all be involved at some level for the good of us all.
It’s essentially, and ironically, like unionism. Unions are only as good as the numbers within them. If unionism is voluntary? They soon become toothless and useless thus easily manipulated and exploited. Sound familiar?
100% correct Countryboy.
Like being a ‘blood donor’ we need to be given the ‘day in peace’ to contibute time for ‘unclutered thoughts’ before voting to have either a blood sucker like “john fucking key” or some other carbon copy of him to suck all our life’s blood and money out of us for the next three years again.
We need to bannish all the vermin called ‘right wingers’ out of our lives now.
You’re a disgrace.
Typical woke zealot. Anybody disagreeing with your viewpoint is vermin.
Absurd ideas like this is how democracy dies.
But it IS his democratic right to have this viewpoint. You calling him a disgrace and absurd is yours although it does seem a bit hypocritical.
So we bend over backwards to get the votes of those that cannot be bothered to get on the electoral list in time . These type of people will be unlikely to read the manifest of either party and are likely to vote for whoever is on the cover of their magazine smiling and holding a baby.
Jody got that right
Take another pill Nick
Pitiful fellow
Now you will be able to vote for capitalism while shopping… sounds about right
Andrew Geddes was a little disappointing saying this would advantage the left.
But the truth is it just removes an impediment to voting which favoured the right.
Levelling the playing field is not advantaging anyone.
So Nick Smith should rightly be told to shove it.
I think this is just as stupid and idea as compulsory voting.
People should have to make a reasonable effort to vote, otherwise they neither value the right nor exercise it responsibly.
Finally, why does this advantage the poor? The unemployed in particular are not short of time to the extent as working people are and there are always tonnes of places everywhere to both enrolled and vote.
So these changes mean more poor people can vote ?
Vote for who or what ?
Currently your choice is lite blue with a little pink or lite red with a slight dash of black and green.
Same crippling economic slavery and corruption when you look behind the ” well being budget ” and the lady who smiles and talks in a reassuring voice.
Or soon the kind bald man who will talk about the brighter future phase two and he might even adopt a struggling family to show he really cares.
There is no choice for poor people except to put up with what we have got because the more things change the more they stay exactly the same.
I happened to be, by total mischance, in the Nelson Mail (run almost completely by females) newsroom when Nick Smith, then the deputy leader of National, cracked up. 2003. None of the staff were surprised, just trying to follow their local crazo’s descent. You can’t believe the excitement of reporters when something goes wrong.
The thing is the “poor” may not vote for labour either. Elections past, both here and overseas, show that the poor don’t necessarily vote for the party offering the greatest handouts or espousing the most modern liberal values.
Regarding voting, when are we gonna have debate about whether citizens only can vote. Why is it that someone, who is a resident only, may have only been in the country a couple of years and still has citizenship elsewhere and the ability to bugger off at will, can have the same democratic right as tangata whenua who can whakapapa back a thousand years and have no other home but here? This is still a hang over of colonisation that keeps us disenfranchised.
Voter participation is important but I think analysing failure and responding to pressure is more important. You know I think politicians have to be confident in there previous 3 years in parliament and carry that confidence into elections. Y’know the left is a special place to me, I was a state house kid so a lot of good memories for me.
It’s nice to see people like Piri Wepu and Israel Dagg and Jonah just to name a few who made it out of the state housing projects. It’s good for me to see National and ACT and other centre-right parties struggling under MMP and the theme of this is how to deal with pressure that comes after making a mistake or the pressure that comes with being critisized heavily for doing something and then how to jump back from that to me, is quite a bit more interesting than people voting or not.
And Charlie’s fruit juices are readily available in most Australian retail outlets and even more awesome is they’re made out of recyclable plastics that we get money for sorting and taking it to recycle stations. So thinking sustainable all the time is the tahi.
And of course this topic of Māori voting always comes up in these discussions because they’re usually underperformes when it comes to voting. So it’s going to be a tough one for The Mana Party and the Māori Party to come back under pressure when performance is at its lowest, or best performing for Labour as the case maybe. Y’know so I want to kind of cover this topic to see if you can learn a few things.
So first of all I think it’s about being honest and saying upfront let’s try this or that and being very open to new ideas. Clearly the Māori Party have to learn from there failures and the belief has to be high in the people around the Māori party insuring that they get back on the horse. People won’t always get this point that the Māori Party has to fight from with inside.
Of course in the end the responsibility falls on Te Ururoa Flavel and he has to work with the Party, no he really does have to leave the Party in a good spot so that skills and performance don’t drop to much and the party bounces back. Where as the Mana Party was all about Hone in the end and the Mana Party ran out of puff when Hone ran out of puff. Although I don’t think Hone has run out of puff but succession is important to maintaining high energy levels. But they have to be pushed so they realize that they are not alone. When the realization is fixated then the motivation will skyrocket. And we can be thankful to Māori politicians because some of the best roasts come from Māori MPs.
So I’ll be cheering for Willie Jackson because he is the man according to me. You know after the 2020 elections there will be a new push for amendments and new legislation and that will be a huge opportunity for Māori to really push the other parties to reform. And I hear from all quarters both left and right that it’s not going to be fair and it will be the wrong direction and the 1% are going to earn fortunes because it’s all about the comforting of the 1%. So it’s a unique opportunity if that is the case for Māori to make things different,and the Māori economy should actually catch them 1 percenters. But much more upwards Modility, that’s the most important.
The thing with supporters and organisers in the background is everyone knows how to cheer and boo, and no one likes to lose so people who do vote know how to deal with the pressure and it’s all about being the most consistent come Election Day, Y’know it’s not a routine thing so be organised and don’t let anyone get into your head.
In my regards the way I deal with pressure when ever I make a mistake is preparation, that’s a big one. The more prepared you are the more confident and relaxed you’re going to be, and the less pressure there’ll be. Second is understanding that failure is horrible and tough but failure is the greatest gift of all because that’s where you improve most. But if you understand that, and you have to be very dedicated in a way only politicians will understand, then you will find the courage to use failure to your advantage. Those would be my two ingredients and I’m sure others would use different things to keep motivated.
Some one like Jacinda Ardern or Winston Peters are able to naturally cope with it because they have high levels of self belief, energy, and self confidence but self confidence is not something that is easily accumulated.
So MPs and candidate MPs just need to do proper training and have debriefings and everything and then the votes will come in in my opinion. Y’know on the day when everything matters MPs have to have it in the bag and be ready to go because parliament is way more demanding than elections.
So and the National Party is still polling strong and ACT is back, wicked. Y’know they’ll have a tough time beating Jacinda and Winston in 2020. I would expect Simon and The Greens Co-Leaders to come up with better excuses than “I just don’t like the rulez,” Y’know that’s not good so we can expect a good catch up from Māori supporters and let’s see how far they get. So I hope you learnt something about how to deal with pressure and how to come back from failure.
Comments are closed.