Voting made easy: Mayor of Auckland

In what is perhaps the most boring race behind Howick and Orakei's, the race for Auckland Mayor has not managed to attract a field of credible candidates to challenge incumbent Len Brown. As an aside, you have probably noticed I like to use the word incumbent a lot, in fact I wrote a dissertation on the topic, it simply means "the guy who currently has the job".

Anyway, lets have a quick look at the "candidates" for Mayor:

• Stephen Berry "Affordable Auckland" - A former Libertarianz deputy leader, which places him somewhere right of the ACT party.
• Penny Bright "Independent" - Also known as "the crazy Watercare lady", Penny is a long time activist and doesn't pay her rates in protest.
• Len Brown "Independent" - The Incumbent mayor, Brown defeated John Banks in 2010.
• Jesse Butler - I'll let Jesse describe himself: "...Masters Degree. Unemployed. All Blacks Supporter. Your new Auckland Mayor."
• Tricia Cheel - An anti-fluroide activist from the North Shore, Tricia was angry in 2009 when her water was cut off two days too early.
• Paul Duffy - A former employee of a credit card company and the founder of duffyclub™, Duffy is campaigning on his business credentials.
• Matthew Goode - A failed local board candidate in 2010, this year Matthew is trying to run for Mayor.
• Emmett Hussey "Independent" - His billboards describe him as "Sane." I am worried that he actually needs to state that as an attribute. He was charged with threatening behaviour back in 1915.*
• Susanna Susara Kruger "Independent" - From Nambia, Kruger is currently setting up a "private global online entrepreneur university".
• John Minto "Mana Movement" - Made famous by his involvement in the 1981 Springbox protests, Minto is a long time activist and a member of the Mana Party.
• Phil O'Connor "Christians Against Abortion" - He is a christian and he is against abortions.
• John Palino "Independent" - An American chef and/or host of a cooking programme, Palino is generally thought to be the strongest challenger from the right.
• Reuben Shadbolt "Independent" - The son of the man who lost the Waitemata mayoral chains at a party. Which seems to be his main attribute.
• Uesifili Unasa "Independent" - The Maclaurin Chapel reverend, Unasa is mainly campaigning in South Auckland.
• Annalucia Vermunt "Communist League" - Ah, the Communist League. Why they still donate an entry fee to the council each election, I really do not know.
• David Willmott "Roads First" - A transport engineer, David would like us to build more roads. We would then need more transport engineers. Ironically, his website is all about government debt and the collapse of Western civilisation into a world of warlords and serfdom.
• Wayne Young "Working for the Homeless" - Made homeless by the leaky building crisis, Wayne would like to be mayor.

 Phew! Okay, that's all 17 candidates. What a eclectic field!
*this was possibly a different Emmett Hussey. Maybe.

Voting made easy: Waitakere

This October is local elections time again. Conducted by postal vote, you’ll be asked to vote for the mayor, the council, your local board, the district health board and (if you’re unlucky) the local licensing trust. Still confused? Maybe this picture will help?

Hmm...no that probably didn't work. Anyway, to make you more informed, I’m going to run through the candidates for the areas I live in. After all, it is all about me. If you're really that interested, a full list of the candidates can be found here. Anyway, without further ado, let’s start by having a look at the candidates for the Waitakere ward of the Auckland Council. In this ward, eight candidates are running for two seats on the council.

·        Peter Chan “Affordable Auckland” – A former Waitakere City Councillor, Mr Chan is running on the “Affordable Auckland” ticket along with former Libertarianz deputy leader Stephen Berry.
·        Linda Cooper “Independent” –A National Party list candidate and a former Waitakere City Councillor, Linda is an alumni of Massey High School.
·        Allan Fazaker – No idea. Google has nothing.
·        Penny Hulse “West At Heart” – The current deputy mayor of Auckland and, more importantly, Robert’s mum. Penny was also the last deputy mayor of Waitakere City and seems to clearly be the strongest candidate in the field.
·        Brian Neeson “Independent” – A former National MP who was replaced by John Key in 2002. This prompted Mr Neeson to leave the National party and run against John Key as an independent.
·        Douglas Robertson “Mana Movement” – Mr Robertson is standing for Hone Harawira’s Mana Movement.
·        Christine Rose “Independent” – A former Auckland Regional Councillor and Labour Party candidate, Christine has been endorsed by incumbent Sandra Coney who is stepping down from the Council.
·        Jason Woolston – Previously famous for being shocked after finding porn on a Vodafone loan phone, you can now find him on twitter at twitter.com/WoolstonNZ. He seems to be a fan of Shortland Street.

Two leaders is quite enough

A delgihtful article appeared on stuff.co.nz this morning.

Under the headline "Maori Party weighs 3 MPs, 3 leaders", it could almost be satire.

Some gems from the article:

• ...Dr Sharples has repeatedly refused to step aside. "The bottom line is I'm prepared to lead us until I'm dead; I mean forever," he said yesterday."...

• ...Dr Sharples said tension between caucus members was "pretty full-on" but they were "still all bros"...

• ..Prime Minister John Key said he would continue to work with the party no matter how many leaders it had...

All in all it reads like it belongs in the Onion.

Speaking of the Onion, here is a piece on Kim Jong-un.

ourconstitution.org.nz

There is some rather important public consultation going on right now that has slipped under the political radar of most people. Well, ok, most people don't have a political radar, but it's not very high profile anyway.

The Constitutional Advisory Panel is currently seeking public submissions on New Zealand's constitution until July 2013. Contrary to popular belief, New Zealand does have a constitution it just isn't contained in any one document. We are one of only three countries in the World to not have a written constitution (along with the UK and Israel).

Anyway, the panel is asking some rather deep and important questions, such as:

• How do you want our country to be run in the future?
• Do you think our constitution should be written in a single document?
• Does the Bill of Rights Act protect your rights enough?
• What role do you think the Treaty of Waitangi could have in our constitution?
• How could Māori electoral participation be improved?
• How many members of Parliament should we have?
• How long should the term of Parliament be?
• And plenty of other important, but potentially boring, questions.

Anyway, at some point between now and July you should head on over to ourconstitution.org.nz and share some of your views on these issues. You can either use their easy to use online forms, or attach your pre-prepared word documents, depending on how many views you want to share. Also, we should find some issues we all agree on and send an official Dinosaurs & Dandelions submission. Except it seems like hard work and I'll never get around to it.

But yes, join the "Constitution Conversation" now or forever hold your peace. I know I'll be sharing my 2 cents.

UK 2010

Welcome to Dinosaurs and Dandelions comprehensive LIVE coverage of the UK 2010 election. (Possibly) The biggest and best coverage by a New Zealand blog founded in April. This page will probably be updated throughout the day. Thanks to our award winning graphics coverage for the banner!

The UK are 11 hours behind us, so 9:30am here = 10:30pm there. My times are NZ Times.

MMP: It's about fairness

Two politics posts in a week, sorry. I better be careful, anyone would think I am actually interested in the stuff or something!

Anyway, my issue today comes from the right wing Kiwiblog. In this post he goes through the scenarios if New Zealand had been operating under Supplementary Member instead of MMP since 1996. Basically the conclusions are: Bigger parties would have been bigger, Smaller parties would have been smaller. What he doesn't point out however is that this is unfair - the percentage of seats parties received wouldn't have been as close to the percentage of votes that they got as it would have been under MMP. That's basically my point, so I'm just going to leave you with the numbers - have a look at them if you have trouble getting to sleep tonight.

On the merits of FPP and MMP: A full analysis and in depth discussion.

Well, I was going to explain FPP and MMP using pasta, but this post will instead have to do.

First of all I just wanted to show you a very cool video from a group in the United Kingdom that shows why there First Past the Post system is flawed: