Legal Beagle: MMP Review - The Proposals
34 Responses
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Raymond A Francis, in reply to
Well, last time people had a chance to vote on Parliments size I believe 81% thought a smaller Parliment was the way to go
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Sacha, in reply to
If people don't want little parties to represent them in parliament they won't fucking well vote for them, eh
Hard to argue with that.
Most worrying thing about keeping the threshold quite high is how hard it is for new political movements to gain any parliamentary experience and resources without riding on the coat-tails of an existing MP originally elected for a different party. Is that the path we want the system to emphasise?
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Well, last time people had a chance to vote on Parliments size I believe 81% thought a smaller Parliment was the way to go
I wonder how much of that is people who mistakenly believe that NZ has more elected representatives with legislative authority than other countries. We actually have considerably fewer since we don't have a federal model or a bicameral House, and our local authorities are effectively gutless outside the narrow areas of empowerment granted them by central government.
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Raymond A Francis, in reply to
I quite agree that we need the numbers but your point the maybe the voters are wrong and given time they will agree with us sounds awfully like the Labour Party saying that surely the voters will see they made a mistake and come back to the fold
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I'm sure they won't come to agree with us, but that doesn't mean their opinion on the number of MPs should hold a lot of sway. If they're not prepared to become experts on forms of democratic governance, which clearly they're not, they need to accept that they won't always get their way.
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Oh, and one tiny thing to add to my rant on page 1. What MMP with no threshold would have given us as governments over the years, including the pre-MMP ones.
1981: 47 National, 25 Social Credit. No foreign borrowing for think big.
1984: 52 Labour, 15 Bob Jones. Free market reforms still happen.
1987: 54 National, 8 Social Credit. No dumping of valuable assets.
1990: 58 National, 3 Social Credit. National remains left-wing conservative.
1993: 42 Labour, 22 Alliance. The Liberal socialists reform movement.
1996: 41 National, 16 Winston, 6 Christian. Conservative backlash (not).
1999: 47 Labour, 9 Alliance, 5 Winston. Same old stuff.
2002: 50 Labour, 13 Winston. Cannabis Law Reform passes as a private members bill from the ALCP finally progresses to a conscience vote?
2008: 54 National, 5 ACT, 1 Peter Dunne. Minority government!
2011: 57 National, 3 Conservative, 1 Peter Dunne. No asset sales.Slightly fanciful here and there and assumptions assume the same vote which it wouldn't be, but still. Better and more responsive governments all around. A great deal more compromises and conscience votes, less hope for the ideological edge, Greens still kinda screwed, ACT even more screwed.
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Hebe,
The question I have is how to get rid of Peter bloody Dunne and never allow the likes of him back. If the Nats didn't give him the spurious "credibility" of a minsterial portfolio, Ohariu voters would have deserted him years ago. As it is, they are smart enough to know that they will have a voice at the top table if they vote for Dunne.
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tussock, in reply to
Hey, tussock, stupid. Try the actual formulae, not rounding on percentages, same end results though, for the most part.
(our alt.history MMP with no minimum)
Other than Labour/Values winning in '72, Social Credit has held the balance of power since forever. Labour wins again for one term in 1984 with a New Zealand Party coalition. Social Credit again hold the balance of power until 1993 with the one-term Labour-Alliance coalition.
Shipley's 1-term 1996 government is hamstrung by Peters and Capill, there's no way the Nats can steal 10 votes of NZF's 13 to go hard-right while keeping the CC happy.
1999 is no change, Labour/Alliance/Green, just a tighter majority and more options for Labour.
2002 adds Outdoor Recreation's 2 seats to the narrow majority, with again more options for Labour.
2005 is no change either, but still more options.
2008 probably eliminates Dunne, as the Māori party hold the balance of power and United's 1 vote is worth nothing.
2011 it's up to Conservatives if they prefer Dunne or Banks for the slim majority, though National would have about 10 options for passing any vote.What amazes me about United is they don't take a few more seats. It should be fairly easy to create a properly corrupt centre that always holds the balance of power and feeds big money to its electorates. They could even bargain based on who gave them the most easy seats. Voters too honest to take it up I suppose. Wonders never cease.
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Labour wins again for one term in 1984 with a New Zealand Party coalition.
Can't see that happening. Despite Labour turning hard right, on election night they were still in theory pretty left wing - election policies etc. Can't pick NZ Party going with them until Douglas started to fire up.
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