Wow – How much does Louise Upston hate women? Why sacking the Minister for Women shouldn’t be the only Minister to go

The contempt for women that the Minister for Women Louise Upston seems to have for women is extraordinary but when you think about it, not that unique within the National Party.

Her silence over the Chief scandal, her silence over the touching of a young female employee by the Prime Minister, her gleeful denial of feminism and even more gleeful support of beauty pageants suggests a women who has always hated the intellectual superiority of her peers. Her latest blunder has been to not even bother speaking at the 125th Council for Women.

It’s like we have a Minister who relishes the dismantling of the very Ministry they oversee.

We have a Minister for Women who hates women. We have a Minister for State Housing who hates state housing. We have a Minister of Housing who hates affordable housing. We have an Education Minister who hates Education. We have a Minister for Christchurch who hates Christchurch. We have a Minister for Public Broadcasting that hates public broadcasting. We have a Minister for Health who can’t eat the food in public. We have a Minister of Youth affairs who has gutted the department by 50% while youth suicide and unemployment soar. We have a Environment Minister who hates the Environment and we have a Minister of Welfare who despises beneficiaries.

Overseeing this Government of Spite is a Prime Minister who doesn’t seem to give a flying toss about the poor, the vulnerable or anyone who doesn’t own property.

How have we ended up with this Plutocracy of Misery? Because we have an electoral system that actively keeps the poor from participating….

Rousing typically apathetic voters from three key demographics could swing next month’s local elections.

Young people, ethnic minorities, the poor and uneducated have been staying away from the polls.

But they are not alone.

Voter turnout in local authority elections has been steadily falling across New Zealand since the 1980s.

…the Herald claims it is apathy, but it’s far more structural than that.

In June I sent the Electoral Commission an open letter highlighting how their own systems prevented the poor from enrolling on an unpublished roll…

I’ve spoken to many people on the fringes of society and asked them why they don’t vote, the answer is always the same, some fear that their details will be used by Government agencies hunting them down, some fear debt collectors hunting them down, and some fear abusive ex partners hunting them down.

Currently your conditions to get on the unpublished roll are quite frankly disgraceful.

First you refuse to even include the fears of debt collectors or the ever increasing mass surveillance of our State Agencies as even a reason to get on the unpublished roll, and secondly the hoops you make the survivors of abusive relationships jump through to get on the unpublished roll are too severe.

I honestly wonder based on the difficulties you place in front of abuse survivors  to get on the unpublished roll how many NZers actually even use that feature.

I demand a change.

If you want to raise the level of participation so that it’s not just rich prick boomer property speculators turning NZ into a de facto Plutocracy, you should change the rules to allow anyone to go on the unpublished roll to eliminate the fears from the poor of being chased by debt collectors and State Agencies and you should make that process as easy as ticking a box.

Without removing the fear of retribution towards the poor you have inadvertently created a system that favours the wealthy and the white.

You’ve managed to make the one person one vote principle of Democracy meaningless.

…to date the Electoral Commission have not responded.

It is no surprise we get the results and Ministers that we do if those most impacted negatively by their policies can’t enrol.