Tariana Turia

The Maori party and Mana party have been very vociferous in calling for bans for all tobacco in the general population. Hone Harawira and Tariana Turia in particular are on public record as harsh opponents of smoking. Turia demanded some sort of health portfolio when negotiating with National for the coalition arrangements precisely to push through anti-smoking measures.

Turia just 8 months ago was calling for the shaming of people who smoke in cars:

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia has suggested drivers should show their disapproval of others smoking in cars carrying children by tooting at them and wagging their finger like Supernanny scolding a child.

Hone Harawira has said in the past, when he was part of the Maori party:

MP Hone Harawira, who is drafting the private member’s bill, said it was “not about trying to penalise the poor addicts who are smoking cigarettes”.

“But the tobacco companies can go to hell. We will no longer sacrifice our generations so you can make profits.”

“I can’t believe how we could have allowed this to carry on. This actually kills people and yet it’s legal.”  Read more »

Tariana Turia has not taken much time at all to sledge out David Shearer for attempting to cuddle up to the Exclusive Bro-thren aka Ratana.

Labour leader David Shearer has said he will gun for the Maori Party electorate seats next year, exploiting the uncertainty in the party – but co-leader Tariana Turia has retaliated, saying Mr Shearer was a poser and Maori people would see right through him.

…  Read more »

Stewart Murray Wilson, or the Beast of Blenheim, is moving next to Tariana Turia.

The Maori Party are pretty soft on offending, preferring to give offenders cuddles and chance after chance after finding all manner of excuse for criminal behaviour.

Wonder how Turia will cope as a NIMBY especially with her moko and household pets around?

Mrs Turia said she would like to look into the laws around re-housing sex offenders.

“While we as a town are dealing with this issue today, the bigger issue here is about the law.

“It is about protecting our communities from high risk offences. It is about the relationship between central government agencies and our local bodies. And it is also about mechanisms for ensuring that communities have a say over what happens within their district.”

And would her views be any different if the Beast was a member of her whanau?

Whanganui is a good gang town.  I think Mr Beast is going to find it preferable to have stayed in jail.

ᔥ Sunday Star-Times

Michael Laws has some advice for john key for his meeting with Tariana Turia:

When this week’s planned meeting does take place, Key should do more than politely nod. He should inform the Maori Party that the wider electorate has had enough of Maori separatism and privilege in any guise. That while such sentimentality and sensitivity may be indulged during brighter times, it is just liability when the economy is in dire straits. Especially when ordinary New Zealanders – Maori and non-Maori – are fighting a daily struggle to make ends meet. And losing that struggle, in too many cases.

The idea that more rewards, more favours and more tax finances should be delivered to one segment of the population – simply because of their culture and their colour – is inherently wrong.

The Treaty may be our guide, but it can never be an arbiter. It’s a simple truth. And this is the season to deliver it.

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

The Maori Party says it is consulting members on whether or not they should stay or go from their arrangement with National. They are still moaning about the facts of life:

Maori Party MPs will talk to their members over their future with National as Prime Minister John Key insists he is too busy to meet the minor party co-leaders about a row over water rights till next week.

In a show of solidarity with claimants pressing their case over water rights to the Waitangi Tribunal, Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia made an appearance at the hearings yesterday and refused to offer assurances over the future of the coalition with National.

Asked if it was the most serious rift yet between National and the Maori Party, she responded: “I don’t know whether I could say that, but I am really concerned about the fallout from it”.

She confirmed the co-leaders would be speaking to Maori Party council members and the future of the relationship rested with them.

“That’s for them to decide really.”

Here is the thing…the Waitangi Tribunal is yet to rule, so everyone is presupposing that they will rule that Maori own water…they might not. But if Maori are dead keen on owning water then we know precisely where to send the bill for damges the next time a flood happens with “their” water.

I’m pretty sure though that they will find life pretty chilly outside of the air conditioned comfort of ministerial BMWs. But National should just let them go…most legislation that has passed recently has been despite the Maori party not because of it.

National too will feel emboldened to promptly axe the wasteful spending sop to them that is Whanau Ora.

The Maori Party shouldn’t get too eager to run off and play opposition.

ᔥ Jeremy Parkinson Facebook

Heh:

ᔥ NZ Herald

Yesterday in parliament Winston Peters again attacked Whanau Ora, and again has been found to have lied through his teeth:

Winston Peters has once again demonstrated his love for political theatre by creating a great melodrama out of a series of unproven facts said Tariana Turia following question-time today.

Mr Peters has cast doubt on the value of Whānau Ora – speculating about the spending of “$174 million of hard-earned taxpayers’ money—some of which is in this audit here—when many providers are using it to pork-barrel, and rort, and commit fraud”.

“Problem is – and it’s a problem for Mr Peters – the organisation he referred to in the House today has never received any funding from Te Puni Kokiri; it is not part of a Whānau Ora Collective – and in actual fact in the audit he referred to there was no mention of Whānau Ora.

“Mr Peters makes allegations at his whim about Whānau Ora – and deserves to be challenged about the veracity of these claims. Sadly his attempts to undermine Whānau Ora will not work because there is no truth in these claims.

It does Winston Peters no good at all to constantly hurl accusations only to be met with the facts. It just sheets home the impression that Winston Peters is a natural born liar and still the unchallenged king of political corruption.

ᔥ NZ Herald

When Winston Peters bribed the old farts with his Gold Card I suggested that the real heroes of our society were not the greedy old people who continually vote themselves more taxpayer largesse. rather it is smokers. They kill themselves off faster, don’t generally get to enjoy the pension and they also commit the ultimate sacrifice in modern society, that of voluntarily paying way more tax for the privilege of enjoying their chosen habit.

It is them who should get the Gold Card not Winston’s greedy pensioners.

A Treasury report has admitted that smoking saves the Government money because smokers die earlier and pay more in tobacco tax than their health problems cost.

The regulatory impact statement on tobacco taxes prepared ahead of the Budget said smokers’ shorter life expectancies reduced the need for superannuation and aged care.

“When the broader fiscal impacts of smoking are considered … smokers are probably already ‘paying their way’ in narrowly fiscal terms.”

In last week’s Budget, Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia introduced tobacco levies that will increase the price of a 20-pack of cigarettes to more than $20 in four years.

The charges would increase the Government’s tax take from tobacco from $1.3 billion to around $1.7 billion by 2016.

The Treasury document acknowledged that the revenue gathered in tobacco taxes already exceeded the health costs of smoking.

A University of Otago study in 2007 estimated that the direct cost of smoking to the Ministry of Health was $300 million to $350 million.

Graeme Edgeler is a frequent commenter on all sorts of election issues, and I have yet to find him to be wrong on anything. He has been kind enough to clarify some points following a post about National needing to look after Nick Smith or he could leave, force a by election, and a hung parliament.

As with all guests posts this is unedited. Those invited to write guest posts are assured that posts will be published in full, whether I agree with them or not. I might comment in a subsequent post, but I will leave this unedited.

When New Zealand adopted the mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system, Parliament had a bunch of choices to make about the detail.

One of the choices it made was that proportionality only mattered at the general election. This means that if an electorate MP from one party resigns (or dies, or otherwise leaves Parliament), and an MP from another party wins the resulting by-election, the overall proportionality of the House changes. Usually this won’t make much difference – the Government’s majority might be reduced from nine votes to eight – but if the House is close to evenly divided, it might make a difference.

This has happened under MMP already. When Labour electorate MP Tariana Turia resigned, Maori Party candidate Tariana Turia won the resulting
by-election, and the number of Labour MPs fell by one, and the number of Maori Party MPs grew by one. And the same principle applies if the replacement is a different person.

You might think that in the event a candidate from a different party from that which previously held the seat won a by-election, the party winning the by-election should lose a list MP, and the party which had the MP resign from it should gain a list MP, so that overall proportionality is maintained with the party vote at the preceding general election. There are good reasons why you might do this, especially if the proportionality of the party vote is considered particularly important.

But the simple point is that we don’t. If you look at Section 55 of the Electoral Act, you will see all the ways in which a seat can become vacant in Parliament. The seat of a list MP cannot become vacant because a candidate for their party won a by-election in a seat they didn’t previously hold. Look through the rest of act, and you simply will not find anything that says we ensure proportionality remains after a by-election is held.

There are also good reasons why we don’t do this. Sometimes it simply can’t work, for example, when a party not previously in Parliament wins the by-election (which the Maori Party and the Mana Party both achieved). And redoing the list seat allocation after a by-election could also completely muck around Parliament.

What would we have done if Winston Peters had won one of the by-elections held during the term of the last Parliament? The current rule we have is that he would
simply have become an MP, replacing the person who previously held the seat, but if we re-did the list allocation, then National would have lost three MPs, and the Greens and Labour one each, so that New Zealand First could have gotten five MPs. This could easily be very destabilising to Parliament. Of course, in a very close Parliament, like the one we currently have (where, for example, the government’s partial sale of various assets is being passed 61 votes to 60), not doing it can have the same effect.

There are any number of different ways we could treat by-elections. The way we do it is probably the easiest, but if people want to suggest alternatives, then they can propose them to the Electoral Commission’s review of MMP. It’s going to look at some of the other rules around by-elections, such as whether list MPs should be able to run in them, and there’s no reason for them not to look at this as well.

One of those issues that will fly under the radar today is the quiet slapping that Tariana Turia gave to Winston Peters.

In the House defending the grandstanding from Winston on Whanau Ora – she reminded Kiwis about Ka Awatea.

Don’t know what it is?

Winston was sacked by Jim Bolger because of his antics over it.

Who was responsible for this new approach to Maori development?

The pensioner of St Mary’s Bay.

It would be oppressive and culturally offensive to hold out the taxpayer’s cheque book and say, either you conform or we don’t deal with you

Yet another of Winston’s ever flexible positions.