The Endorsement (Patreon)

It will come as no surprise to most of you that I think you should party vote Green.
I would never tell anyone how to vote, but I wanted to lay out my thinking.
Obviously, I'm left-wing, and I don't believe that Labour ruling as a majority is left-wing enough, I think the Greens are needed in coalition to drag them left.
But there are several other reasons.
First off, if you want Jacinda Ardern to be Prime Minister then paradoxically you should party vote Green.
If the Greens poll below 5%, there is still an outside chance that National + ACT will get above Labour and we're in a hellscape where it's Prime Minister Collins and Deputy Prime Minister Seymour. But there is a zero percent chance that National + ACT will be more then Labour + Greens, which means getting the Greens over 5% is crucial.
That's my pitch on a statistical level.
On a future statistical level, Labour needs friends. If Labour gets in as a majority this time, that radically decreases their chances of winning the following election. National has been punished for its lack of friends on the right, and the very same could happen to Labour if the Greens are gone. Parties getting majorities in MMP are unlikely, but Labour are a genuine shot of this. If they do get a majority and there is no Greens, then there is a very high chance Labour will have no potential coalition partners going into the 2023 election.
On a values level it's simple. Only the Green Party seems to be taking climate change seriously. Yes, Covid is next-level shit house, but climate change has the potential to be several orders of magnitude worse. We need a Green Party in Government to get Labour back to focusing on this generation's "nuclear free moment".
The Greens are also offering an ambitious house building programme, an ambitious transportation programme and a more progressive tax system. These are all things that are better for the future.
If we want to leave behind a New Zealand that's still green and progressive for our children and our grandchildren, then party voting Green is the most sensible decision.
For the cannabis referendum I definitely endorse a hearty "yes".
There are many reasons. For a start, the law is racist, and we should not have racist laws. Māori are much more likely to face convictions for cannabis crimes than Pākehā. So, let's get rid of racism!
The tax money from selling it will also come in handy as we spend eleventy billion dollars on the Covid recovery. It's also a way to take away a stream of funding for gangs. Think of it this way: illegal cannabis helps fund gangs, legal cannabis helps fund our future. Money from cannabis taxation has been ring-fenced for health and education. Yay!
Also, gangs don't ID people. So, a 15-year-old is much more likely to get access to cannabis through a tinny house than they would through a dispensary that has to ID people and sell to 20+ year olds.
We spend $200 million every year policing cannabis. Let's free our police up to do police stuff that isn't so petty.
And for those that smoke pot, it'd just be easier if you could pop down to the dispensary and get some controlled cannabis, instead of having to go to your dodgy mate's house, getting home, getting baked, ordering pizza, then being paranoid that the delivery person is an undercover cop.
The end of life bill was really hard for me, I started off as a hard "yes", but as I read more and talked to more people I became increasingly more "no". I'm not going to offer any suggestion on this vote, as it's so much less clear-cut to me, so that's up to you.
Get out there and vote. Make your voice heard. All that jazz. Democracy is pretty much the most powerful thing we have so exercise it.
I'll be doing RNZ's election night coverage so you can tune into RNZ on Sky channel 83, or Freeview channel 50. You'll see my pretty face.
Good luck all and thank fuck we're nearly there. It's been a slog.