Posts by Andrew Geddis
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“I’m going to go along with everyone else here, and predict that the Commission will propose dropping the party vote threshold to 4%, and removing the one-seat exception. I don’t rule out its going to say 3%, but would be very surprised with anything lower than that.”
Pretty much agree. But I also think it may recommend that the best idea would be to abolish the electorate lifeboat and go down to 3% if voters agree to do so at a referendum – with a fall back of abolish the electorate lifeboat and go down to 4% if the government doesn’t want to have a referendum.
“The Commission will, however, recognise public concern about centralised control of party lists, which I believe it will seek to allay by proposing strengthening the requirement for internal party democracy. It will suggest that at the very least parties should hold internal votes of all (or close to all) their members, in the process of list-ranking (although the result won’t be binding).”
Oh God, I hope not. After all, Labour has just gone through a quite extensive internal review and reworking of its constitution/candidate selection process that would, under such a rule, be unlawful (or, at least, would have to be added to in order to comply with the law). All in order to produce a (for the moment … because you can be sure there’ll be future pressure to up the vote’s status) non-binding indication of whether a candidate should be listed at number 25 or 26 on the party list.
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Hard News: John Banks: The volunteer did…, in reply to WH,
How have the Police avoided the irresistible inference that Banks intended to avoid making proper disclosure of the donation at the time he solicited it?
Because that isn't the legal issue - the issue is whether he "knowingly" sent in a return of his donations that was false. And he's come up with a possible story as to why he didn't that makes it hard to say beyond reasonable doubt that he did. So the police decided it would be a waste of time prosecuting him.
As for "The very least that can be said is that Banks’ is a scheming and dishonourable weasel" ... sure . Which is why, as Graeme Edgeler's post says, this is now a political and not legal issue.
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Legal Beagle: Johndotbanks - the law is…, in reply to Tom Semmens,
"I am pretty sure that as long as National select a candidate for Epsom in 2014 then he or she will defeat Banks."
According to Stuff, "sources close to the Epsom MP have indicated he will not stand at the next election."
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"If John Roughan wants to gradually morph into Jim Hopkins, that’s his business. But he does his paper no credit and his readers no service with shrieking displays of studied ignorance like the column he presented on Saturday."
Or the Saturday before that: http://pundit.co.nz/content/doing-the-herald-editors-job-for-him
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"The two judges who dissented in the Supreme Court only did so on the question of whether the evidence should be admitted despite the illegality"
And then one would have thrown ALL the evidence out for EVERYONE (rather than allowed in the evidence for the four charged "seriously").
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Legal Beagle: The law may be that stupid, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Rich,
Banks didn't run for the two offices at the same time ... it was only long after he lost the mayoral race that he looked to ACT and Epsom. But in general, the rules as to which set of electoral laws apply depends on the purpose for any given donation - is it to fund a local campaign or a parliamentary one?
Candidate donations don't belong to a political party ... unless the party itself made this some sort of condition for giving its endorsement to an individual.
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Things get even more odd.
Under s.109(1)(b), the requirement is to disclose "the name and address of each person who made an electoral donation TO THE CANDIDATE and the amount of each electoral donation." But under s.109(2)(c), you can disclose "anonymous" donations.
So what does "anonymous" mean? Well, under s.5, the definition of anonymous is "in relation to an electoral donation (as defined in section 104), ... a donation that is made in such a way that THE CANDIDATE concerned does not know who made the donation."
Now, does s 109(1)(b) mean that ONLY donations made directly to a candidate personally must be disclosed? Obviously not ... as the definition of "electoral donation" makes clear, there is an obligation to disclose all donations made to fund a candidate's campaign whether given to the candidate directly or to another person acting on that candidate's behalf. Which makes sense, given how campaigns work. So here "to the candidate" really means "to the candidate's campaign".
Yet it would seem that under s 5, the knowledge requirement is personal to the candidate concerned - "the candidate" really means "the candidate". Which then allows for setting up "chinese walls" inside campaigns, so that the people getting the money don't tell (or, say they don't tell) the candidate who has given what. Which involves an awful lot of trusting candidates and their campaigns to "do the right thing".
Unless, of course, we read "the candidate" in s.5 as we do in s.109(1)(b) as meaning "the candidate OR HIS/HER CAMPAIGN", which would bring the definition of anonymous into line with the apparent intention of the disclosure mandates in s.109. So the only donations that may be listed as anonymous are those that come into the campaign in a way that can't be traced at all (i.e. through a bank cheque, or cash in a little brown envelope, or the like). In which case, Banks would have been wrong to list Dotcom's donation as anonymous. But did he "know" that his return of donations was inaccurate?
God, I hate the law.
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Hard News: #JohnDotBanks and all, in reply to Sacha,
"... and he's a human lawyer."
Is there any actual evidence to back up either of those claims?
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Hard News: #JohnDotBanks and all, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Matthew,
What you said first up ... if Goldsmith wins, he quits as a list MP before being formally declared the elected MP for Epsom, thus bringing in whomsoever is next on National's list.
If ACT wins, nothing changes. But if Parker wins ... ? Then he quits as a list MP before being formally declared the elected MP for Epsom, Labour gets one more MP, and National are forced to rely on the Maori Party for a majority.
However, Parker won't win.
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@Graeme: "Except maybe it did work under first past the post. Maybe the reason National or Labour never even adopted some policy was because electorate members in marginal seats who feared for their jobs spoke out loudly in caucus, in a way that they're possibly discouraged from doing now because those who stand up to party leadership risk having their list ranking suffer?"
I would have thought you'd have a better reason for considering a major change to the structure/workings of MMP than "maybe things were different under FPP", without any actual evidence one way or the other. I mean, isn't it just as likely that under single-party FPP Government there was greater pressure on MPs to toe the party line so as to allow Government to get its way, whereas under MMP the members of a party caucuses have more scope to shift their position (given that accommodations must be made with support parties in any case). And in any case, what's the difference between low-ranked list MPs who know a drop in party vote will spell an end to their careers and marginal electorate MPs? Why isn't the incentive for the former to speak out against potentially unpopular policy just as great as the latter?
So who really knows? And if we don't know if any good consequences will follow, then proposing a change that (I think) has demonstrably bad effects (in terms of who parties will run in non-marginal seats) is a bit silly.