Given that we still have the ridiculous 5% MMP threshold someone needs to do the 'pork barrel politics' of going up and down the motu and giving 'fringe' views their fair hearing in parliament. Winston Peters has championed a large potpourri of causes over the years, many of which have turned out to be facetious rumour mongering, but some of them have been serious matters which needed addressing.
In this case I'm optimistic that the second inquiry, which both ACT and NZ First leveraged in the election to gain more power in the coalition negotiations, will give us more answers. Apportioning blame in a criminal way is stupid and won't heal division, but we should have an honest conversation with all of the evidence about how the 'second half' went wrong.
Funnily enough, I've noticed that these 'second half' failures have been a theme in All Blacks games this year as well. Any thoughts on the relationship between the performance of our national sports teams and our government?
Hi Stephen. Thanks for those thoughts! Political scientists have looked for correlations between national sporting victories/losses and election outcomes, and found only mixed results, as I recall. Nothing definite. I recall people saying that Key's timing of the 2011 election after the RWC was a bet on the ABs winning though.
...and we need to hear too, why in spite of repeated 'boosters' Covid is still apparently rampant in society. In fact my observation is that the more scrupulous people are with boosters, the sicker they become. Is your booster really necessary?
Thanks for adding that, Helen. Here's my anecdote: I got vaccinated and never caught covid at all. Well, I'm no expert, but the Summary Report says: "In addition to the protective effect of the elimination strategy, vaccination is estimated to have saved more than 6,500 lives and prevented more than 45,000 hospitalisations from COVID-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand." (P. 54). So I guess that means NZ would have had more than twice as many deaths with Covid if there'd been no vaccine. Cheers.
The politics of this new report are intriguing.
Given that we still have the ridiculous 5% MMP threshold someone needs to do the 'pork barrel politics' of going up and down the motu and giving 'fringe' views their fair hearing in parliament. Winston Peters has championed a large potpourri of causes over the years, many of which have turned out to be facetious rumour mongering, but some of them have been serious matters which needed addressing.
In this case I'm optimistic that the second inquiry, which both ACT and NZ First leveraged in the election to gain more power in the coalition negotiations, will give us more answers. Apportioning blame in a criminal way is stupid and won't heal division, but we should have an honest conversation with all of the evidence about how the 'second half' went wrong.
Funnily enough, I've noticed that these 'second half' failures have been a theme in All Blacks games this year as well. Any thoughts on the relationship between the performance of our national sports teams and our government?
Hi Stephen. Thanks for those thoughts! Political scientists have looked for correlations between national sporting victories/losses and election outcomes, and found only mixed results, as I recall. Nothing definite. I recall people saying that Key's timing of the 2011 election after the RWC was a bet on the ABs winning though.
...and we need to hear too, why in spite of repeated 'boosters' Covid is still apparently rampant in society. In fact my observation is that the more scrupulous people are with boosters, the sicker they become. Is your booster really necessary?
I'll give you three words to start with: variants, and anecdotal evidence.
Thanks for adding that, Helen. Here's my anecdote: I got vaccinated and never caught covid at all. Well, I'm no expert, but the Summary Report says: "In addition to the protective effect of the elimination strategy, vaccination is estimated to have saved more than 6,500 lives and prevented more than 45,000 hospitalisations from COVID-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand." (P. 54). So I guess that means NZ would have had more than twice as many deaths with Covid if there'd been no vaccine. Cheers.
True now as it was then: the shots don't necessarily prevent the spread of COVID, but they do prevent COVID from sending us to an early grave.