Features

At 5.30 on a Friday afternoon a month or so back, Andrew Vuong gave Green MP Russel Norman a call to chat about what the Greens have in store for us.

Andrew: So congratulations, you're finally a member of parliament. Is it everything that you thought it would be? Russel: Yeah, I mean I have had quite a bit of experience working in and around parliament, so I had a pretty clear idea about what was going on.

Andrew: Is it brutal in there?Russel: It's been pretty rugged over the last couple of weeks with the Winston Peters debacle.

A: It is election year, and the Greens have generally had a very high support among students. Why do you think that is? R: I think it's a combination of us having very good policies for students, such as a universal student allowance and reducing fees, but I think that it's also that a lot of young people are very idealistic and want to see a better world and they're very future orientated, so they're deeply concerned about all the environmental issues that we're facing.

The leader of the united Future Party, Peter Dunne, is a fascinating man. Friendly, polite, and honest, he explained to Andrew Vuong his history in student unions, how to solve the student debt problem, and why UF are the gold standard for political parties in New Zealand.

First off, I just want to read you a passage from Rodney Hide's autobiography, ‘My Year of Living Dangerously', where he describes his time at Canterbury University. "At my first week at university, I went along to the student meeting on the lawn outside the union building. I turned up to find Peter Dunne, the student president, lecturing students about café food prices. When I listened to Peter speaking in parliament I can still see him cutting his political teeth on the cost of food for students. He probably did more for student welfare with that campaign than any other piffle sprouted by any other students." What do you make of that? Well that's interesting, I haven't read his book; in fact from memory the meeting was actually not so much about prices as the length of queues in the café. This is going back to 1975 and it was at a time when students had been much more concerned about the war in Vietnam and apartheid in South Africa so I was starting to focus more on things that affected students domestically.

It was an audacious move by such a small country. New Zealand's shift to the relatively unknown MMP electoral system in 1996 captured the world's attention, and with the fifth election under this method less than a month away, it is an opportune time to reacquaint ourselves with its contentious history and complicated procedure. For first-time voters, this guide will hopefully demystify the quirks of MMP so you can head to the polling booth next month confident that you are doing your bit to shape New Zealand's future.

You know who 'he' is. You have seen 'his' orange latex body and emoticon countenance on television commercials, postcards, buses, billboards. The Electoral Commission calls him Orange Elector, to others he is known as Orange Election Man or simply Orange Guy. But whatever you call him the facts remain the same - he is an animated humanoid debuted by the NZ Electoral Commission in 2002 in an attempt to get us to vote. And how does he do this? By bombarding us with his image so we can't but recognise him, and through the use of catchy slogans like 'you can enrol online now' or 'I'm enrolled to vote. Are you?' That last one has always worried me. In the public library the other day I came across an enrollment stand festooned with his image. I had a conversation with the Electoral Commission employee manning the stall and it went almost exactly like this: Me: The government propaganda has the Orange Man saying he's enrolled to vote. But he's not legally a human. So, he's not really allowed to enrol is he? EC Employee: Um, no. Me: So the government is, in fact, lying to us? EC Employee: Um, yes.  EC Employee: Would you like to fill out an enrollment form..? I'm not bothered that the government is lying to us. I'm used to them lying about all kinds of important issues so this tiny little one is hardly worth mentioning. Or so I would think. If it weren't for the fact that this time the government have dragged an innocent in to do the dirty work for them.