As yesterday was our day for electing a government for the next three years, today is the first step in that 1000+ day journey. The election returned an increased majority for the incumbent Labour Party and also increased representation for one of their coalition partners. Their other coalition partner of the last three years did not fare so well and won’t have a seat in the new parliament – such are the vagaries of a system such as out MMP (mixed member proportional representation). The outcome was probably not unexpected, though it was surprising to hear that for the first time since we adopted this voting system, the highest polling party can control the parliament without the need for a coalition partner. That isn’t to say that they won’t choose to have a partner, but they don’t need one if they choose to go it alone.
Our Government of the last 3 years had to manage some difficult challenges, New Zealand’s worst (and perhaps one of the world’s worst) mass shootings, the deaths and injuries of tourists visiting an active volcano off the coast of our island nation and of course, along with the rest of the world, Covid 19. Similar challenges have been faced by previous governments and perhaps it was fair to see that the management of the last three years brought increased support for the incumbent. I personally still retain the concerns expressed in my previous blog regarding the personality rising above policy and the focus not being broad enough to acknowledge that much of the expert work is done by others Donald Trump would be an extreme example of this ‘personality’ phenomena and I don’t regard our own political figurehead as being as unhinged. But I do worry that personality type politics are fundamentally flawed and may lose favour with our population.
It is with great pleasure that today we added the first video to this website. The video was produced by a very talented and kind member of the site, Nicol Cherechesiu and watching it is highly recommended. Nicol has been asked how it was done so that more videos may be added and can perhaps become a way to bring our items into collections such as "jewellery" or "photography" etc so that visitors to the site can find items more easily. Again thank you Nicol for this attractive and very useful addition to the website
