Politics is an emotive subject, and rightly so - you have a powerful group of people forcibly taking a non-trivial amount of your money and telling you how to live your live; who wouldn’t have strong feelings and opinions about that?
So I appreciate that there are going to be strong and likely polarized views in the comments. However, this is not a place for hate or venting, This is a place of learning.
Anyone who has read the About page will know that I created this publication to keep track of what the government does in their term and to inform and change people’s perspectives about policy. I hope to see this happening not only in my writing, but also in the comments of others.
Changing peoples perspective on a subject that they feel emotional about is a difficult thing and cannot be done by directly challenging people. It can only be done by talking and listening to each other and presenting evidence-based, well considered discussion that considers ideas from multiple perspectives.
I haven’t explored how much control I will have over comments on this platform, but I will kindly ask that you make comments that are in line with the above ethos. This implies that (while the chat section can be about anything regarding NZ politics) comments should be relevant to the article they are displayed on, polite, consider others, be evidence based and open-minded. Anyone stepping into the comments and chat section should be open to changing their own ideas and opinions and expect the same of others.
Finally, I will leave you with a thought:
One attribute I’ve noticed about every stupid person I’ve met is their aversion to taking on board new information - which is why they don’t know much. As it’s impossible to know everything, the moment we are so sure of ourselves that we become close-minded, is the moment we stop learning and become stupid.