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Mauritius launches referendum on way forward for the Island
The Mauritian government will, on Thursday, 18 February, launch a national referendum at which the people will express their views on how to make the country a "durable Island", PANA reported from the Mauritian capital, Port-Louis.
Professor François Odendaal, facilitator for the project 'Mauritius for a durable Island', announced that the referendum would be opened to all shades of opinion and citizens -- women, men, fishermen, small and medium-sized companies, corporate sector, local authorities and the various ministries.
The referendum will be on for six months, Professor Odendaal said, adding that after the event, Mauritius would drafted a document defining the national vision for a durable Island.
According to him, "Mauritians will have to express their points of view on the model of country they want to live in 20 or even 50 years from now and their priorities."
"If they succeed, they will be an example not only for themselves, but also for the other Islands of the Indian ocean and even to for the bigger countries in Africa." he said.
He emphasized that Mauritius was not currently a durable Island because the country imported most of its food.
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Press Release by Hon Sir Roger Douglas, ACT New Zealand. Thursday, February 4 2010
It's very rich of Labour's Annette King to blame National for the high rate of unemployment for young New Zealanders when it is, in fact, Labour's abolition of youth rates that has caused this problem, ACT Finance Spokesman Sir Roger Douglas said today.
"Since youth rates were abolished in early 2008, the unemployment rate for 15-19 year-olds has almost doubled. The number of unemployed youth has risen by 18,800 people," Sir Roger said.
"It is pretty clear what is causing this to happen – if you look at the 10-year period before the abolition of youth rates, youth unemployment peaked at 15.9 percent. Today, it stands at 26.5 percent.
"An excessive minimum wage denies young people the opportunity to get a job, as employers cannot afford to hire them. When unemployed, they can't gain work experience, don't receive on-the-job training, and never develop a work ethic.
"If Annette King really cared about those young people who cannot find a job, she would end support for the policies that Labour voted for that caused it. Instead, she seems to think the solution is make-work schemes paid for by the taxpayer or hiding the problem by allowing more to become students.
"Labour has caused the excessive rise in youth unemployment and now wants taxpayers to pick up the tab," Sir Roger said.
ENDS
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Following is the NZ Press Council's response from the formal complain I made before Christmas regarding the NZ Herald's biased reporting over the smacking referendum.
Hello Steve,
Because your complaint included published items outside the Press Council time limit of three months it had to be considered to determine whether the Council could accept it.
It has been determined that since you needed to consider material over a substantial period to determine bias (or not) such a timeframe was inherent to your process.
The Council has therefore determined to accept your complaint. This process took a little longer than usual because of the holiday period, and for that I apologise.
I have now sent your complaint on to the editor of the New Zealand herald and we await his response. This response will be forwarded to you for comment in due course.
Regards,
Mary Major
Executive Director
New Zealand Press Council
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I trust you have had an enjoyable holiday break. I know I have certainly felt the need to stop and rest awhile after a challenging 2009.
Now it is time to begin the work ahead for 2010. Earlier in the month I wanted to find out what the reaction of the general public would be when asked to sign the new petition. So with faithful and available volunteers here in Tauranga we set up at three events; The half ironman, Blues Brews & BBQ's, and an evening 20/20 cricket match.
The results were very encouraging with 500 signing the petition in 3 hrs on their way in to the BBB event. Considering there has been very little publicity as yet about the new petition we found that approx 7-8 out of ten were prepared to sign.
The conversation generally went like this.
"Will you sign our petition Sir/Maam?"
"What's it about?"
"Making referenda binding upon parliament. Do you remember the anti-smacking referendum last year when 87% said no and Parliament has ignored it?"
"Sure do. It was ridiculous. What's the point of having a referendum if they are going to ignore it!"
"Exactly, that's why we must now collect signatures for another one to make Parliament listen."
"Sure I agree with that, where do I sign?"
It was encouraging to be reminded that so many still feel strongly about being ignored, and concerned about what that means for our democracy.
We had the full petition question printed on one of our signs so anyone could read it if they wished, but most signed on the basic understanding that this was to make referenda binding.
The other signs were;
Don't let Parliament ignore you
Fight for Democracy Make Referenda Binding
Sign the Petition Sign the Petition Sign the Petition
Where to now!
Our next Stop will be the Field days in Southland Feb 10-12 and then Napier Art Deco week Feb 18-21.
Barbara and I have begun planning where we should travel over the next few months to attend events to collect. But of course we can never do it on our own. As part of the traveling we want to connect with supporters and hold meetings to enlist more volunteers and get media coverage where ever possible. We will look forward to hearing from any of you who may be interested in making arrangements for a visit.
Can you begin to look for events nearby where crowds will gather?
We will give more details of plans in the next update and further details of other strategies to collect signatures.
The petition form can be downloaded from www.campaign4democracy.co.nz
Warm regards,
Larry Baldock
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This article first appeared in the Cambridge News 18/01/2010
Once upon a time I fell madly in love. She was the most gorgeous, intelligent and
successful woman I had ever met, she changed...
my life forever. Unfortunately she went back to the devil she knew rather than the devil she didn't. Obviously she wasn't happy in her previous relationship, just as many voters aren't always happy with the previous government. Like this woman, we get tired of being dominated, controlled, manipulated, threatened and cheated on, so we flirt with something else to fill that empty chasm. In New Zealand politics there have been numerous third parties like Social Credit and New Zealand First. These flirtations have all come and gone but ultimately we keep returning to one of the two major parties. We keep going back for more punishment election after election. Every election they beg and plead with us and always promise to change their ways... but they rarely do. Alas, even though we know we can't really trust them anymore and our love for them is not the same it once was, we give them yet another chance. Our
memories are very short. Over the years parliament has become a den of iniquity, full of broken election promises, ignored referendums, abuse of taxpayer money, fraud, racism, physical violence and arrogance. Just like some marriages I guess. Falling voter turnout only goes to prove the lack of trust New Zealanders have in their political system and their politicians. We complain, moan and groan but mostly we grin and bear it. Will we ever move on from this or are we destined to keep repeating history ad infinitum? What can we do about it anyway, this is our lot and we just have to accept it don't we? Well no we don't. We need to be prepared to make a stand, take back the control we have abdicated, become more aware, and more outspoken. We must become as some academics have referred to as the gladiators of society. The politically active and motivated who are not prepared to let politicians do all the thinking for them. For me, I've moved on, I no longer have a blind faith for any one political party. They all have their good and bad points. I
want more say on issues that can profoundly affect my life. I haven't given up on love, or politics. I will continue to comment, provoke and suggest new ideas, but I will refuse to vote any longer (as do twenty percent of the population). Some will argue that if I'm not prepared to vote then I can't complain. However, like workers who can withhold their labour when they are being unjustly treated, I can withhold my vote. Just like in a marriage, sexual favors can be withheld, so sorry, not tonight, not even next election my dear politicians, I have a headache.
ENDS
This article first appeared in the Cambridge News 18/01/2010
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I have updated and expanded this report which has been used as the basis for a formal complain to the NZ Press Council about how biased the NZ Herald was regarding the smacking referendum. The Council are in the process of considering my complaint. To view this report
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An interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald by former Liberal MP for Epping, Andrew Tink which is well worth reading
click hereThanks to one of our avid supporters, Ian Andrews, for pointing this out.
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A good Bloomberg story about Icelands money problems and how the voters will decide what happens in a referendum.
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Without wanting this to be a plug for the ACT Party, I couldn't help agreeing with the comments Sir Roger Douglas has made here about superannuation and health. Something needs to be done to change the system which obviously isn't working.
Superannuation:
Superannuation today locks you into poverty in your retirement. And the low levels of superannuation occur despite the high cost to taxpayers.
Superannuation costs you one third of your personal tax. If you earn the average wage, that’s $4000 a year. Superannuation is not free. It costs you. Our super scheme is designed so that people pay today for the retirement of their parents. If we simply adjusted the system so that money went to pay for your own retirement, most would have a cushy retirement.
If that money was put in the bank, earning seven percent nominal interest (five percent real), then the average worker would retire with over $1,000,000. It would be like you’d just won lotto and then retired. And let’s say you put that money in the bank at one percent interest – a pathetic one percent. The interest on that money would return more to you than current superannuation does.
A single pensioner currently gets $311 a week, while a married pensioner gets $239. With just two percent interest on the capital, they’d earn in excess of $347. If we used the more realistic five percent figure, then the average income of a pensioner would be over $1000 a week. So the cost of Government superannuation, in old age, is a capital sum in excess of a million dollars, from which interest in excess of $1000 a week could be earned. It’s costing you.
Some go through their lives, scraping by, paying tax, but not having enough left to save. When they retire, they’ll get whatever the politicians of the day decide they deserve. But the wealthy, well, they will have saved for their retirement. They’ll be able to live in comfort, doing the things that most want to use their retirement for.
The raw deal most get from Superannuation is only going to get worse. The flight of New Zealand’s most skilled, combined with the baby boom, will see increasing burdens shifted to the working poor. They will pay high taxes and receive a stingy pension. But while changing the system would help us all, it would harm some politicians in Labour and National who rely on promises they cannot deliver to win votes. By making people self-reliant, they would have to change strategy from making increasing numbers of people recipients of welfare. The power that gives them is something they will be unwilling to give up, unless we force their hand.
Health:
54 percent of your and every one else’s personal tax goes towards healthcare. The growth is scary, when just two years ago the figure was 41 percent of your personal tax.
Saying 54 percent can hide what this means. If you earn minimum wage, you will pay about $2500 every year for healthcare. If you earn the average wage, you will pay over $6000 for healthcare.
People say that we have a free healthcare system. To me, it seems that free healthcare has never been so expensive! Healthcare is not free. It costs you. And when healthcare costs the average person $6,000 every year, you’d hope that it really delivered.
And yet it doesn’t. Despite the enormous cost, we ration healthcare. People who are sick get placed on a waiting list. On that waiting list people get worse, not better. Some die. And the suffering that takes place on health waiting lists is rationalised away, as if the goal of equality justifies denying healthcare to people who desperately need it.
If the health system treated every one like this, then at least it would treat us all equally. But the most pernicious effect of socialised medicine is how it creates second class citizens. The first way it does this is through a bizarre mixture of subsidies. Some medicines are fully subsidised, some are partially subsidised, and
others are not subsidised at all. Decisions over what medicines you can take are actually determined not by the patient, not by the doctor, but by a bureaucrat in Wellington.
The second way it creates second class citizens is through the way pressure can be
applied to get treatments performed. Doctors, patients, politicians, can all pressure the system to get certain operations performed at the expense of others. If you can get your story on Campbell Live you can be sure you’ll get your treatment. If you can form a pressure group to get Herceptin subsidised, you’ll get your treatment. But in socialised health, your treatment comes at the expense of someone
else’s. And because the affluent tend to be the more politically connected, the
more influential, the more organised, treatments for the rich come at the expense of the poor.
The third way it creates second class citizens is the fact that affluent people can afford to pay twice. They can afford to pay tax for healthcare, and then buy health insurance on top. The very people who are denied this opportunity are the people that universal healthcare was meant to help. While the poor remain ill or die on waiting lists, the affluent may visit a private hospital. No one would seriously contend that the system treats people equally.
But the solutions we hear to this problem are the same kind of pathetic snake oil we hear from all the other parties in Parliament. All the problems could be solved if only there was more money. When will we wake up to the lie? Under Labour, health spending increased in real terms by 50 percent. We still have waiting lists. We still have a system that creates second class citizens. Despite the huge increases of resources at their disposal, the productivity of doctors actually reduced by 15 percent. Nurse productivity dropped 11 percent. Overall, the drop was only eight percent. Why eight percent? Because the productivity of cleaning and orderly staff surged. And those services were outsourced to the private market. This just gives a hint of the kind of benefits that could be achieved if we dropped the pretence and lived up to the reality: socialised healthcare has failed.
If we simply gave the person on the average wage the $6,000 back they currently pay, this would enable them to buy catastrophic insurance, put money aside for their healthcare in retirement, and pay for their day to day healthcare needs such as doctor visits.
www.rogerdouglas.org.nz
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Larry Baldock has now launched his new referendum, “Should Parliament be required to pass legislation that implements the majority result of a citizens initiated referendum where that result supports a law change?”
Please help by downloading the petition
click here and collecting signatures and or distributing the petition forms to businesses in your area. It would be wonderful to collect enough signatures to allow this referendum to be held at the next election alongside the MMP referendum.
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