Bryan Bruce – Choosing Not To Vote For Act
ACT tertiary education spokesperson Parmjeet Parmar announced recently that her Party wants to make the fee tertiary students pay for their support services voluntary.
The Student Services Fee, which is separate from tuition fees, helps go towards the services and facilities that students use.
Depending on the university, the fee helps fund things like Orientation Week events, student media like Salient or Critic Te Δrohi, clubs and societies, childcare services, sports and recreation facilities, and health services like subsidised GPs and free menstrual products.
Students, ACT argues, should have a menu of services for which they can choose pay seperately, instead of a blanket fee for things they donβt want or use.
This student vote teaser is entirely consistent with ACTβs Right Wing, Neoliberal, User Pays, Liberatian politics of selfishess that promotes individual choice over social responsibilty to society iand duty to others.
Except – when it applies to themselves.
When will they, I wonder, announce that paying tax should be on a voluntary menu basis?
Maybe I could choose not to pay my share for the upkeep of parliament buildings because I donβt go into them.
What about the salaries and expenses of David Seymour and the whole coterie of ACT MPs ? Could I choose to not pay my share of their salaries and expenses because I didnβt vote for them?
Frankly I canβt wait to see the end of the ME society and the rebirth of the WE society..
And we can do thatβ¦ by applying libertarian principles – choosingβ¦
β¦not to vote for ACT!
Bryan Bruce is NZs leading documentary film makers – he will be stepping in as a regular contributor while Editor Martyn Bradbury is in hospital
Well if there was some other party that stood up for free speech and equality before the law, I might vote for them. But the left no longer seems to believe in either.
These days there is nothing more ME than a Lefty. Just saying…
These days there is nothing more ME than a Lefty. Just saying…
saying…not very much.
The ACT party and Seymour are a wasted space. They have no idea of how the other half live, or how the needy never stop striving just to make ends meet.
Most of what Seymour has brought in has failed miserably β in fact what has he brought in that we can celebrate? Surely not continually knocking the Treaty and Maori, while claiming to have Maori blood β BS; Charter Schools paid for with taxpayer money; and supposedly he oversaw a 16% drop in youth crime β really? Seymour is the puppet for Atlas Network who promotes the interests of political and financial elites, and undermines democracy in NZ. And now he wants individual choice over social responsibility to society and duty to others? What a recipe for disaster! Go away Seymour β you are not here for NZ or its people! You are a selfish, self-absorbed nitwit!
I would sooner vote for someone like Count Binface than vote for Seymour and those smug traitorous ACTorvists.
Binface or NZ equivalent too, anytime for me before Seymour/Act.
ACT are traitors to this nation. Seymour should be in (or under) a jail, not stealing our money.
” ACT are traitors to this nation. ”
Absolutely. roger douglas was here, on TDB, not that long ago and of course, douglas is ACT and seymour’s merely his minion and douglas walked away without a scratch. What’s wrong with us that we let such fiends dominate our life’s narratives?
douglas should be in jail and seymour should be his cell mate. Look what they’ve done to us. Look at the damage they’ve caused us and to our rich, beautiful country, and will certainly be aiming to cause us ever more carnage, especially to younger people who must plan their lives around the greedy machinations of cheap crooks who’re nothing but piss, wind and lies. National [party] carpet baggers have spread out like a disease and dragged us down into the gutter and all in the interests of their personal greed and narcissism. We need a public and independent royal commission of inquiry up and into everything that wears a suit and tie in AO/NZ. And as for labour? Those fuckers are far from clean. It was the labour party that hatched the douglas, it would pay to remember and hipkins hasn’t once opened up that particular avenue of discourse. He wouldn’t fucking dare and I’ll bet it’s because he likes the $ix figure$ plu$ entitlement$ we must pay him, and for having done what? Nothing, is what I’ve observed.
On the Standard blog I got growled at for saying similar things about the great Rogernome.π
CountryBoy:
> douglas is ACT and seymourβs merely his minion
That’s really not the case. Douglas remains a died-in-the-wool neoliberal. He’s now disowned ACT, because they finally faced the fact that the neoliberal project is over, and pivoted to a more neoconservative platform.
Same corporatist economic policy, but without the social liberalism or the lip service to competitive markets. Seymour’s grovelling apologism for the supermarket duopoly, for example, would never have come out of an ACT that was still neoliberal.
It was never particular accurate to call ACT (or neoliberals in general) “libertarians”. Although that’s certainly how they *wanted* them to be described, so I really don’t get why the left do their reputation laundering for them there. But calling a neoconservative party like ACT “libertarian” is about as accurate as calling a democratic socialist a “totalitarian”. I really wish people would just stop mangling political language like this.
Excellent. On Thursday night in Otautahi at the town hall, there was lots of abuse from the ACT supporters to the Palestine solidarity network Aotearoa people. A PSNA supporter attendees fronted up to Ruth Richardson, who was attending, and said he was puzzled why ACT the party of ‘their rights over their property to do what they like with’ (presumably that means they could set up a car yard) had not spoken out against Israel taking land from the Palestinians. She did not reply. I have never quite understood why they support Israel, is this just part of right wing thinking.
“I have never quite understood why they support Israel, is this just part of right wing thinking.”
Israel is the model society of their dreams – authoritarian, violent, white supremacist, expansionist, and animated by a messianic conviction that they are a people chosen by God to enjoy a destiny above that of inferior people and inferior peoples. All this ugliness also lurks in the souls of ACT members.
Act is a hard right ‘corporist’ party and for the bulk of their existence they were the right wing of the National party exploiting a loophole in our proportional representation and they gamed our system in a non-proportional wayto win extra seats for national / right wing coalition.
They would not have existed in parliament if National had not told National voters to give Act their electoral vote in Epsom ….
I really wish people would not ignore this history which shows Act to be an extension of the National party dependent on National voters for their existence.
Even now, although not repeating the stunt of 2011 & 2014 when National ( John Key ) explicitly endorsed the Act candidate,,, nowadays National just ‘campaign for the party vote’ in Epsom and Tamaki … wink wink.
NActional party is the best and most honest description for these right wing parties,, who are not joined at the hip, but more like joined like human centipedes …. voters and citizens get to eat their passed under urgency output / shit
Clearly this is more about attacking student unions rather than providing options and choices.
Friends donβt let friends vote Right Wing FFS
While I do not support ACT in their proposal to make student union fees voluntary and can understand that student unions do good things I also hope that they have stopped pushing the consumption of alcohol as a solution which seemed to be a primary focus in the early 1980s. My impression was that it was a profitable business for them although the idea that providing for students needs by selling them alcohol does not make sense now. At the time I didn’t mind although alcohol consumption and academic ability are opposites so I feel that linking them as the student unions do is part of the reason for the problem drinking culture.