So going on how things changed as voters were counted, it would appear that the early voting broke more for Nat / Act, and then the day of voting broke for Lab / G. NZF & TPM stayed relatively consistent throughout the night. This makes sense, blue-collar working people are somewhat more likely to vote Labour than National, and are less likely to have time to get to one of the fewer advance voting posts, than the typically white-collar / retired voters who are somewhat more likely to vote for the right.
The vote totals have now tightened up considerably on whether National can form a government with just Act; such that I am interested to know how many overseas / special votes there might be, and if any of them have been counted yet. If there’s enough of them, and they tipped more Labour/Green than National then it might be enough to pull another vote from the right to the left, and given Parliament has an overhang this term Luxon would need to pick up the phone to someone to get an outright majority, at least on confidence & supply.
Another big talking point for me is that one in every twenty voters this election has no representation in Parliament at all due to the threshold requirements for minor parties.
Hmm, there does seem to be a reasonably strong break towards Labour in the later counted votes. It could mean National end up with as low as 38% (especially after specials). If TPM win 5 seats, there’d be 122 MPs with overhang. That could mean National/Act will fall just short of a majority and require support from NZF.
Which would be making a bleak situation comically worse. The ol’ Kingmaker ends up wielding a lot more power than the 1-ish% influence the people meant for him to have.
No party in the MMP era outside Labour/National had ever won more than 1 general electorate seat (i.e. besides the Maori seats) before this election. Now it looks like Act will win 2 and Greens will win 3… that seems like a significant moment.
This is what our generation does. It is what it is, we just got to get up and deal while hopefully making it easier for the next one… or at least one less fire for them to put out.
Looks very unlikely there will be any other result besides National/ACT majority. Without having to worry about other coalition partners, this will probably be our most right-wing government of the MMP era. A lot of the National caucus are pretty right-wing at heart (rather than Labour, where a lot of them are pretty centrist at heart). So ACT will probably get more wins out of the coalition agreement than you might expect. NACT should be able to keep the government running smoothly as it was under Key, meaning they will be odds on to win a second and probably third term.
Which means cost of living, inequality and environment/climate issues are all set to get substantially worse.
Im just reminding myself that regardless of who is at the helm, things aren’t going to get better in the next 3 years. NZ has lacked decades of investment and so small that we are at the wim of Aus, Europe, China and US. National may give our country a bit of strength, but it won’t be stronger people and I doubt they will be looking ahead.
Rolling back environmental policies and landlord tax will be pretty bad for all of us. I don’t think strength is anything we require. Nobody is worried of an armed New Zealand.
Clarification - economic strength, (business) investment, population and tech. Soft power, not hard power, but saying that I’m in Defense studies and the asia-pacific region is having significant concerns with hard power and we have a massive EEZ. Moot point though, back to mine.
Our country needs significant financial investment - we love this country but we are soo far behind in soo many ways. Labour has tried to offset things like cost of living, housing, health but there is soo much to do.
Yep, totally agree. Business is concerned with profit for shareholders. Infinite growth. Don’t worry about externalities like pollution, ecosystem collapse and gross inequality. Those are for society to deal with, or ignore. Business doesn’t care.
The fact that billionaires exist, and are idolised, is incomprehensible to me.
10 years ago I would agree with you. The changes of the last 10 years (and my non-youtube education) is giving me some hope. Any business is bound by societys ethics, norms and expectations (including the law) - we just have to demand our ethics and norm are followed.
Hard disagree. The ethics is bound by how much they can get away. Banks are constantly getting fined for breaching their own rules. Big multi conglomerates run on how much they can get away with. Looking at America’s deficit of a trillion. No way to pay it back. Money is worthless. Fed can print more at any point and banks can magic it out of nowhere.
We have no sat over Exxon we have no say over how most multi billion dollars operate. We can’t even push back against planet killing policies.
You are naive to think the public have much power. We are given the illusion of democracy but a two party system that can change policies on a whim, with zero accountability.
No country is holding up their population. They don’t care. That is the issue. The closer we get to annihilation the more they won’t even pretend about the pure creed.
Hard disagree. The ethics is bound by how much they can get away.
I think we are agreeing, just differ in method and application. These companies have strength because our ethics give them strength - ill use ExxonMobil as the example. They just brought a massive competitor, but we can still use public transportation, walk, bike or EV. ICE cars are what our society is built around and the easiest, but we can say no and we can make the harder choices.
Yes and no. We can decide to use other means but that doesn’t change their power to lobby our government and create pressure on food and medicine and military.
They aren’t just fuel. They own a magnitude of companies and the means of productivity. They are our infrastructure.
Our GDP is tourism agriculture and probably building of some sort.
All require a heavy dose of Fossil fuels. Fertilizer fuel and building supplies.
Fossil fuels are the current status quo and where the investment was. Our agriculture needed alot of modernisation (and unis are cutting the courses), tourism is very low gdp, building carries massive logistics costs and heavy equipment which can be electrified.
They can petition government and armed forces all they want, but we vote both of those in (hmm, topical)
Thats disappointing as I don’t think national gives a shit at all. I suspect the tax cuts with the current cost of living got national through, but it does nothing to move the country ahead.
I suspect nothing about what National offered was what did it, other than the fact they were not Labour. I fully believe that the majority of people vote without knowing what policies they are voting for.
I found that too. Any political conversation I had this cycle were basically: “Winston for the shit stir” or “Lifelong (insert party) voter”. Nobody I spoke to really knew any policy.
Yup - “oh why vote for those losers” yet when I asked what they disagree with they have nothing. I feel like alot of nationals vote was “i want something different”, a tax cut or lifetime members.
I’ve been mentioning the cool Act policies in passing to people I talk with. No one knew that they want to remove all building standards, repeal the act that sets our carbon reduction targets, or allow employers to call everyone contractors to get around employee protections and so they don’t have to pay annual/sick leave, etc. I’ll be watching the coalition negotiations with interest.
Gotta love that for some reason a bunch of people have voted against their best interests. Think it’s time to reevaluate giving people decisions about their lives.
I disagree- they voted in their short term interest with tax cuts and blaming labour for the state of things. Our country is lacking soo much, and this was people just wanting something to take the edge off now.
Take the edge of in what way ? Pretty short sighted if a couple months helps but then national policies kick in and things get markable worse. But who knows aye
Oh, it is shortsighted. But people can’t think about the future if they are struggling now and it is something we all do. 2k tax cut gives me something now, 100,000 homes in 10 years I have to wait for.
Which is probably why we are in this situation. We don’t look to the future. Gotta start thinking big picture. Planets fucked. Need some drastic changes or this is humanities end.
Im curious what way you voted - I didn’t vote any of the big 4 because their focus is the 3 year reelection (and act/green is effectively a lab/nat vote). Don’t need to answer, just speaking out loud and happy to see others are on the same page.
You don’t have to be a citizen to vote in NZ. Permanent resident (or resident visa) is enough. So long as you’re entitled to live here indefinetly (and have lived here at least 12 months), you can vote.
Interesting, the “am I eligible to vote” things just say you are if you’ve been here 12 months and are entitled to stay indefinitely.
I guess one key question is, on a spousal visa, if you split from your spouse are you still entitled to stay here indefinitely? If not that may be why you can’t vote. I couldn’t find any information specifically on if you can vote on a spouse visa.
Labour - no. But pushing things in a direction can facilitate construction. I’ve been seeing huge number of subdivisions come in, rezoning and growth up but it takes time and the global situation has been kicking everyone’s ass and there is little any NZ govt can do about it.
I disagree, a lot of people seem to think having equal rights to any other NZer is in their best interests, and I think that’s a reasonable point of view.
If you look at the cumulative votes graph, you’ll see there are a lot less voters this election. It makes me wonder what the shift would look like if everyone voted (or, what are the key demographics for people who don’t vote).
Younger people usually much less likely to vote, and also tend to vote for the left, especially Greens. So yeah, it would make a huge difference most likely.
They’ve done well, but I think they would really want to be in the 13-15% range. Still, looks like they’ll pick up 2-3 electorates, which would be huge.
Maybe, but I doubt that made much difference to people who were realistically actually going to vote for them. This will likely be their best result ever.
It’s amazing actually, the number of comments I’ve seen online from supposed green party supporters saying they don’t like them having a race quota, don’t support other aspects of their policies etc, but will still vote for them, is incredible.
Having said that, they do have some solid policies.
Which is quite disappointing consider the massive investment the future requires. Uni, health, general education and environmental funding just aren’t there and we are the ones who will be affected.
I think labour is reaping the consequences of protecting the country during covid. They did an amazing job and now its over the country forgot how much their choices did.
Haven’t followed Hipkins too much, but I have believed Jacinda is a great person and empathic leader, but an average politician. Exactly what we needed in covid.
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