I cared less about this story and more about the attention that it generated. New Zealand has an extremely feminine culture, we care too much about people and what they do, what they look like, or how they are coping emotionally. The story only serves as a distraction from numerous failures which Parliament is responsible for, and seeks to humanise a group of people (Members of Parliament) that are largely predatory and corrupt.

There won’t be any significant change, and they will become bigger spenders than Labour when it comes to prisons. Supposedly the prison system is at maximum capacity and it’s just not popular to build more prisons (even though we should). I’d be in favour of National if their policy included building something like the Black Dolphin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dolphin_Prison) but then having normal prisons for people who commit minor offenses, like swearing on the phone or not paying their parking fines.

As far as I’m concerned Luxon is just a twink who takes it up the can. He’s not the far-right over-zealous Christian bigot that Reddit says he is. He’s not going to make any significant changes - and his policies will cost the tax payer more. How many prisons will they need to build to keep people locked up? This is the question that nobody is asking. What is the cost to the tax payer? And what will they do as an incentive to not ram raid, not join gangs and not commit crime? The minimum wage isn’t enough to live on. If I suddenly have to buy a new car I’ll have to ask my folks for some money. National and Labour are crap parties and I don’t understand why anyone votes for them, they have destroyed the economy, made everything unaffordable.

If you don’t go to uni at 17, get a degree by age 20, get into middle management in your 20s, then you’ll just never own a new Mazda or a house. Even if you do everything perfectly, at best you can own a small townhouse and have 2 children by the time you’re 40. The quality of life keeps going down, even for the upper middle class. We stress out and work hard just for basics. This country is a hellhole.

making it harder for young families to buy in the communities they live and work in

Yay let’s all spend $100 a week commuting to work and back.

Looking forward to dying from heatstroke in 50 years time from global warming due to increased and prolonged reliance on fossil fuels.

National will do everything they can to sabotage cheap petrol. The Marsden Point Refinery will never function again, and National supports the Russia Sanctions Act, making sure we never buy petrol from the #2 producer in the world, meanwhile #1 producer (Saudi Arabia) increases the price. India and China will continue using diesel and oil as usual and here in NZ the yuppie elite will drive their Teslas, and using fossil fuels will be a dirty poor people thing. It’ll mostly be poor people like me who can’t buy a new $15,000 EV with 70 battery health who will be driving petrol cars 5 years from now.

I’ll be demonised for my carbon sins.

Luxon says climate change is a fact and it’s caused by us, so it’s only a matter of time before a fanatical nutjob proposes a ban on natural gas. There is nobody advocating for continued use of fossil fuel, they all want it gone, just a matter of how long.

China will continue to use the Power Of Siberia pipeline and use quantities of gas that we cannot imagine, but kiwis will be told that having a bbq is bad, and driving an LPG forklift is bad. In Christchurch we had very strong winds yesterday and within a few hours of the government alert system pinging our phones, Redditors were speculating that the Nor West wind is proof of climate change.

If people can afford the latest technologies that’s great, but I’m poor and I want to continue using fossil fuels especially when my rent is so high. What if it’s the weekend and 1 of the other 11 tenants is using the only washing machine and dryer? How do I wash my laundry if I don’t have a petrol car to drive to the laundromat? I can’t believe the greenies are going on about housing trusts and not taking about ridiculous zoning and regulations that prevent us from having a world class city. I can’t cook where I live, I can’t do my laundry. The washing machine is constantly breaking and playing up. It’ll just lock a person’s clothes and not open for 3 days. It’s a disaster. So until I have my own apartment with a bike shed and laundry, I’m probably going to need fossil fuels.

I’m going to study the language only when I have reliable income to travel, otherwise I learn language, only to forget it, then pay thousands of dollars for more language lessons. Foreigners don’t need fluency in Russian language to teach English in a high school, just need to be good enough. I’m not sure how to define fluency, but obviously it’s impossible to pass certification if I don’t know any grammar, for example.

What’s the minimum age to get into Parliament, and how many candidates are under 35 years old? Born in, let’s say, 1987 or after? I’ll consider voting again but only if there are more candidates under 35.

TL;DR

if they don’t pass emergency housing laws IMMEDIATELY then I’m not remotely interested in voting. The housing CRISIS requires emergency regulation, like the anti-terror emergency they rolled out after 2019 when they took everyone’s guns. We need the same level or urgency, not less.

Today I was at a bus stop and there was a Labour Party guy handing out some crap about transport costs. As a dole bludger I get $1 bus fares but under National it’ll be $2.65. I don’t see this as a reason to vote. I handed the flyer back, as soon as I saw it was political, and I told the guy: “I don’t like any of these parties”.

I’m 32 and I distrust boomers and Gen X that’s why I don’t vote. These people only enrich themselves. I don’t trust older millennials either, if they are 5-10 years older than me they probably have a higher quality of life, therefore they cannot be trusted.

I won’t be bribed into voting (transport schemes) and I disagree with National and Labour, who view the country like it’s a god damn vending machine. They think everything is about money - insert coins and the country functions. A good country is one that cares about its people. It needs to have pride and patriotism. I’m not proud to be a New Zealander and none of these parties are any good. Regardless of who gets elected, I still want to move overseas and teach English in Moscow.

The Green Party wants housing trusts to build more, but the Greens are weak on de-regulation when it comes to private builds. As a former Act Voter I can’t take the Greens seriously (I voted for Act in 2014 but never voted in an election since then). I also can’t trust Act because they don’t want to de-regulate housing.

The main reason I don’t vote, is because I never see Gen Z or millennials doing any housing related activism. Voting every 3 years means nothing if you’re not an activist. I can’t think of even 1 person in Christchurch who I can rely upon to listen to me and increase support for my views on housing. All these kids do is get sucked into these political movements and political parties. People my own age and younger are turning into my enemy because they side with corrupt political parties, and waste their energy on that sort of crap. They should be helping me with grass-roots stuff, not supporting these disgusting political organisations.

I’d have preferred it if they’d just done nothing to be honest. By “doing something” but still changing nothing, it just gives them an excuse to nag for votes again, which they don’t deserve.

Nearly all of these things are just tweaks that can be achieved by signing some documents. The country has gone backwards under Labour and it will go backwards under National too. I’m going to wait for boomers to die off before I consider voting in another election. There’s no point in voting for parties that will protect landlords and stamp out legislation that will allow for new builds. Which is all of them.

Banned military style semi automatics

They did this to protect themselves not to protect us.

I support them destroying themselves. If their core voters abandon them, that will teach them a lesson. Two years of failure and we’re supposed to what… respect them?

Labour shouldn’t have run a campaign. They should have let the Green Party take their place. Having Labour run again is just embarrassing.