Daylight saving and the anti-smacking law – Part 1

Tomorrow morning the daft daylight saving period starts when clocks go forward one hour. Last year this period was extended as a result of a petition started by MP Peter Dunne and Nelson City councillor Mark Holmes¹.

On Scoop Dunne blows his own trumpet: “When Nelson City Councillor Mark Holmes and I ran the petition to extend daylight saving last year we received overwhelming support, illustrated by the nearly 45 000 people that signed up.”

Let’s just analyse that briefly. There are currently an estimated 3,138,000 people eligible to vote in NZ, so Dunne is calling a petition from less than 1.5% of voters “overwhelming support”; if he only gets one vote on election day (his own) he’ll probably call that “overwhelming support” as well.

The government has done a survey showing 82% support for the extension to daylight saving and MP David Parker describes this as an “overwhelming majority”. That survey covered 1,006 New Zealanders.

How does this relate to the anti-smacking law? Well, there’s just been a survey in Invercargill which received 12,000 responses, twelve times as many as the daylight saving survey. 83% of respondents want the anti-smacking law repealed: by the David Parker definition that is an “overwhelming majority”². Goodness only knows what it is by the Peter Dunne definition.

Earlier this year a petition opposed to the anti-smacking law received 390,000 signatures, which is 12.4% of people eligible to vote or more than eight times the Dunne definition of “overwhelming support”.  General opposition to the anti-smacking law is also at the Parker “overwhelming majority” level, yet the government is trying to delay the referendum and condescendingly says that doing the sensible thing and running the referendum on voting day might confuse voters (Note to Helen: you haven’t made universal lobotimies compulsory yet, so we are still capable of filling out two forms in one day).

In summary, the government is happy to find that 82% of respondents like the result of a petition signed by 1.5% of voters, yet they ignore 83% opposition to a law and a petition signed by 12.4% of voters.

All together now: in a loud voice repeat after me “DOUBLE STANDARD”.

Click here to go to Part 2

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~ You can use the category selector on the right to see my other posts on the anti-smacking law ~

1. if you click here to view another press release on Scoop you will see that Dunne was soliciting signatures and gave Holmes’ Nelson City Council email address as a contact point for people who wanted to obtain petition forms. Why is Holmes using a taxpayer-funded email system to advance a personal cause, presumably during time when he is supposedly working for those taxpayers to justify the fact that his wage has been stolen from them?

2. at least 83% of New Zealanders were opposed to the anti-smacking legislation before the law was passed, yet the government ignored the “overwhelming majority” and passed the law anyway. It’s the politicians’ way of giving a digital salute to New Zealanders.