Originally Posted by
Sanx
It's not about only allowing the rich and powerful a vote; it's about only allowing votes to people who contribute to society. NZ, like most western countries, already practices extremely selective denial of voting privilege. Prisoners cannot vote.
Why not extend that to the terminally unemployed or unemployable? If you don't work (say, for 12 months prior to the election) and you're not on sickness or disability benefit or a pension, you don't get a vote. Simple.
Whilst I don't agree with Robert Taylor's Enoch Powell references (the bloke was a racist fucker who hasn't been posthumously been proven right. His predictions of inter-race wars resulting in rivers of blood did not some true. Whilst there are racial problems in the UK, don't forget Powell's targets were West Indians, not Indian sub-continent Muslims) there certainly is abuse of the refugee system in NZ, not helped by courts who allow convicted criminals to stay after release from jail just because sending them home might upset their parents.
And I have some knowledge of what I speak; my wife arrived in NZ (as a minor) with her family after her father was taken into Aden prison in Tehran for daring to criticise the authorities. Only massive bribes to a corrupt guard managed to get him out. My wife is now a qualified translator / interpreter who has done work for both the Department of Immigration and the Refugee Status Appeals Authority. Almost without exception, every Iranian she's translated for (theoretically, she's independent, but you know what I mean) has been lying. Luckily, it's been fairly obvious to the authorities that they have been.
But the blame for some immigrants having no respect for New Zealand's laws and customs can be laid squarely at the blame of Labour and their lefty politically-correct cohorts. The PC-brigade insist that everyone else's culture should be respected and honoured. The PC-brigade insist that we, NZers, should change the way we behave so as not offend immigrants. It is the PC-brigade who pander to the desires of immigrants instead of, quite reasonably, insisting that recent immigrants live up to the very old adage "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
Oddly, you'll often find more liberal immigrants fully support the belief that it is their responsibility to fit in with the customs and laws of the host country, not the other way round. My wife is one of the most scathing opponents of the bludging nature of some immigrants - but then she and her family have worked their arses off since almost the day they arrived. When they landed in NZ, they had a small rucksack each containing their belongings and a couple of hundred US dollars. They received emergency assistance for less than four weeks and since then, have no claimed a cent off the state in benefits. They deserve their NZ citizenship and refuge in NZ, as do many other immigrants and refugees. But the ones we hear about are the ones that are not deserving, and they tend to give the rest a bad name.
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