Young Tradie To Take ACT MP's Seat In Youth Parliament
'I'm stoked to have Fletcher Brown as my Youth MP," says Luxton.
'He's the kind of young Kiwi who gets up early, gets his hands dirty, and adds real value to his community. That kind of contribution deserves a voice in Parliament.
'Fletcher is currently training through MITO, with a focus on agricultural and horticultural equipment – work that keeps the region's farms and orchards running smoothly. Rather than taking the traditional university path, Fletcher chose to earn while he learns, picking up real-world skills in the process.
'Speaking with Fletcher, I can tell he's passionate about what he does and he's got a strong head on his shoulders. Too often, young people are pushed down the academic route by default. Fletcher made a different call, and it's paying off.
'Tradies and practical people are underrepresented in politics, and that includes Youth Parliament. It's good to have someone in there with a bit of grease on their hands who's showing young Kiwis that you don't have to go to university to be successful.
'I can't wait to see him championing the young people who choose to work, pay tax and offer practical skills in exchange for an honest wage.
"MITO is doing an outstanding job equipping young Kiwis like Fletcher with real-world skills, industry connections, and a pathway to meaningful careers. But more than that, they're backing them to lead. Their support for Fletcher's role in Youth Parliament shows a real commitment to developing future leaders in the trades."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
9 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Why are we more likely to buy when our options are limited?
Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech. Why are we more likely to buy when our options are limited? Good business sense using consumer psychology. Photo / Getty Images Every city has its signatures. In Ho Chi Minh City it was someone pointing at my sneakers and offering to clean them. In Da Nang it was, 'Taxi, sir?' and in Hội An it's been, 'Want a boat ride?' We have resolutely fought off all efforts to part us from our money. Well, most efforts. It was our first afternoon in Hội An, a historical port city in central Vietnam, home to a Unesco world-heritage ancient town. We'd gone in search of a particular tailor, recommended to us by our hotel and breathless English tourists on TikTok. At the first street corner, I got out my phone to check directions, and 15 minutes later we were at a completely different tailor, having been expertly waylaid by one of their 'scouts', who'd seen us and asked if she could offer directions … The next day we did a lantern-making class at our hotel, led by the ever-patient tutor, Moon. Moon asked us what we had planned and made a few recommendations, including one for dinner at the Citadel restaurant at which a friend of hers worked. That evening, we followed her advice and had a frankly delightful evening marked by fantastic food, an absolutely lovely waitress, Anna, and regular check-ins from Gray, the manager (who also happens to be a Kiwi). As with every restaurant we visited, we had to force ourselves to sit back and enjoy the experience; at no point did we ever feel like we had to rush to finish, pay, and give up our table to the next customer. Not like, ahem, at home in Wellington. What do these latter examples have in common? Bloody good business sense based on friendliness and strategic use of consumer psychology. Having recently hosted friends visiting Wellington from overseas, my heart was warmed by hearing them say how friendly New Zealanders are, but it's a step change to Vietnamese hospitality. For example, first and last impressions count or, in technical terms, primacy and recency. We make impressions incredibly quickly and largely unconsciously, and research shows that, while we care deeply about how good the chef is, we have to be drawn in first to find out. That can hang entirely on the rapport we sense from our first encounter. When we left the restaurant, Anna farewelled us by our names (which she remembered several days later when we happened to pass by). That's a personal touch that leaves a positive impression. Ever started to feel tense because wait staff check in on you a little too frequently? Or neglected because they don't check in at all? That's another tricky balance, and one that requires a bit of intuition about the best time to stop by. Another thing Citadel did well, but almost every other restaurant we ate at didn't, was a sensibly curated set of options. Ever eaten at the American restaurant chain The Cheesecake Factory? The menu runs to more than 200 items and around 20 pages. It is frankly exhausting. You get to a point where you no longer care what you order, you just want to make it stop. Psychology researchers Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper are probably best associated with the notion of this 'paradox of choice'. In a particularly well-known experiment they showed that people may be more likely to head over to a counter offering 24 types of jam than a counter with only six, but people were 10 times more likely to buy jam when the number of types available was reduced from 24 to six. Why? Because what if you make the wrong choice? The more choices, the harder the decision, and the greater the likelihood of buyer's remorse. So in keeping with this research, we broke our holiday rule and went back to the Citadel and its more limited number of choices a second time.
NZ Herald
10 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Facing prospect of election defeat, Government tries to change the rules
There's no good reason to remove election-day enrolment, which has been in place since 2020. And there's certainly no reason to remove the ability to enrol during the advance voting period. You've been able to enrol up to the day before election day since 1993. The idea that election-day enrolment was delaying the official results is also nonsense. Whether people update their enrolment details two weeks before the election or on election day, that form still has to be processed and their information updated. It's the same amount of workers' time, either way. The Government can just hire more people to do it after election day, rather than before, and the job will get done on time. Don't give me the 'well, they should sort out their enrolment details earlier' line. I thought National and Act were against bureaucracy? And now they're saying you should lose your right to vote unless you know about the bureaucracy of voter enrolment and tick the state's forms well ahead of time? We should be making it as easy as possible for people to exercise their right to vote. Aotearoa New Zealand has a good record in that regard. We were world leaders in votes for Māori, votes for women, removing the property-ownership test. We don't have people queuing for hours like in the United States. But now the Government wants to use bureaucracy to trip people up and stop them voting. Even Judith Collins has said it is wrong: 'The proposal for a 13-day registration deadline appears to constitute an unjustified limit on s12 of the NZBORA [the right to vote]. The accepted starting point is the fundamental importance of the right to vote within a liberal democracy. A compelling justification is required to limit that right.' The Deputy Prime Minister says you're a 'dropkick' if you don't get your registration sorted well before the election. But why shouldn't a person be able to come along on election day or in the early voting period, cast their vote, and, if their enrolment details need updating, do it at the same time? Why force us to use an inefficient, two-step process? Since when has the supposedly libertarian Act Party loved bureaucracy? Truth is, we know why the Government is doing this. It's a Government that's failing to deliver and fading in the polls. In most recent polls, Labour has been ahead of National. Forty-eight per cent of voters say it's time for a new Government. Only 38% want to give this Government a second chance. So they're trying to screw the scrum in their favour. David Seymour let it slip with his 'dropkicks' comment. Act MP Todd Stephenson put it even more bluntly: 'It's outrageous that someone completely disengaged and lazy can rock up to the voting booth, get registered there and then, and then vote to tax other people's money away.' Trying to make sure only the 'right' people are voting is dangerous, anti-democratic thinking. We all know this change is about setting up barriers for people who are young, Māori, disengaged or alienated from the structures of power and wealth in this country – because those people are unlikely to vote for a Government that works in the interests of the wealthy and powerful. The Government knows full well that these New Zealanders, who have the same right to vote as anyone else, are less likely to be familiar with the rules around registration. The Government also knows there will be many people, Kiwis not as politically engaged as you and me, dear reader, but no less worthy of the vote, who will turn up to a polling place on election day or during the advance voting period thinking that they can update their registration at the same time as they vote – because that's how it has been and they haven't heard about the change – and be turned away under this new law. Democracy is meant to be a contest of ideas. And it is fundamental to democracy that the voters choose the Government, not the other way around. If the Government wants to be re-elected, it should give people a reason to vote for it, not try to exclude voters it doesn't like.
NZ Herald
10 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Heather du Plessis-Allan: Is the Govt so desperate they announce any half-baked idea?
Of all of the above, it's the ban that's going to give them ongoing headaches. On the face of it, it's great retail politics. Everyone hates being stung 2% for using the credit card at the sushi shop. But there will be consequences. The surcharge is there because it costs to use your credit card. Someone has to pay for it. Either you or the retailer. Currently, it's you in the form of the surcharge. After the ban, it'll be the retailer. And we're talking a lot of money. Interchange fees alone – the fees Visa and Mastercard charge – suck nearly $1 billion out of NZ businesses a year. Add what retail banks charge on top of that and we're talking several billion apparently. One retailer reckons they were paying $2500 a month just in merchant fees. That's $30,000 a year. They realised they were basically subsidising everyone's credit card loyalty schemes. So, they introduced the surcharge. No savvy small or medium-sized retailer will suck up a cost like that. If they can't get that back through a surcharge, they'll get it back by upping the price on products. So, while the Government can sell the story that they're saving consumers money through the ban, they're not. Pity the poor travel agents especially. Let's say they book flights to London for a family of four at the cost of $15,000. If the family put it on the credit card, which most of us would do, there is a $225 merchant fee. Once the ban kicks in, the travel agent will essentially be helping the family pay for their holiday. So, you can see why retailers are up in arms. They're so angry they've managed to mobilise the country's chambers of commerce into banding together in a statement criticising the ban. Their point is a fair one: the Government should really be dealing with the source of the problem, which is banks and credit card companies charging too much for a basic service. Ministers choosing to beat up on Kiwi retailers instead of sorting out big foreign bankers is bizarre. Even more so because SME owners are traditionally National Party and right-leaning voters. The Government is burning its own support base here. Which brings us to the weirdness of this. It should have been entirely predictable that this would blow back badly. So, why did they do it? Are they so desperate to get good coverage that they take any half-baked idea pitched at them by a minister at the weekend to announce the following Monday? Did they run out of time to interrogate the idea before announcing it? Or did they anticipate all the problems but ignore them in their desperation to get a cost-of-living announcement out? It also begs the question, why are they so panicked? The answer is probably that it's not just the Government's vibe that has shifted. It's the country's vibe too. It's the middle of this Government's term and the middle of winter and the tail end of a very long and hard recession. The goodwill towards the coalition Government is suddenly depleting. It's possibly recoverable. Summer and an economic recovery should improve things again. But even when we're warm and flush, it won't stop the Government stuffing things up itself if it keeps making weird announcements like this. Watch now for how they get out of this. And they'll have to. They can't be doing this to their own voter base just months out from next year's election.
