Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Rogan - no.
It couldn't possibly work. Minimum turn-out for a referendum could work, but an election?
I suppose if no-one votes the result would be a little hard to fathom. But as we don't currently have a Parliament, or any MPs it's not like the current lot could just hang around and run the country while another election is organised.
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Stil, if we entrench that, then any repeal of s45 would effectively strip maori of any Parliamentary representation. Good luck making that fly.
National has promised to begin a constitutional process to remove the Maori seats in 2014. The most likely mechanism for such a process has always seemed to me to be a referdum. They wouldn't need good luck to make that fly, just a bare majority in the House and the populace. Entrenchment may have absolutely no effect on their plans.
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What would happen if the Maori electoral option was entrenched, the Maori seats weren't - and Parliament voted to remove the Maori seats. How much would entrenchment of the Maori option mean then?
Interestingly, we kind of have that situation at present. The membership of the Representation Commission (the body that draws electorate boundaries) is entrenched, and so is the membership of the Representation Commission for when it determines the Maori electoral boundaries. A bare majority might repeal the Maori seats, but we'd still have to appoint people to a body that would delineate the boundaries between them!
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Um, no.
I'm aware of that, but I think the answer is still yes. If we'd rejected MMP and stayed with the Electoral Act 1956, you could argue that the entrenchment in s 189 of that act was Parliamentary (and thus suspect on supremacy of Parliament grounds). But we voted for MMP and to change the law.
We gave our assent to section 268, and I think that means something. A Parliament messing with a reserved section by majority isn't (just?) standing up for Westminster democracy and Parliamentary supremacy, they're (also?) standing against the will of the people. In 1993 the people of New Zealand said ''Hey! Voting at 18, the 3-year Parliamentary term, and the secret ballot are important to us, so important that if you want to change them, you're going to have to come back to us and ask in another referendum. However, we'll allow you to avoid having to hold a referendum if you can get 75% of MPs to agree to a law change.' If it wasn't there, maybe we'd have rejected it...
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Her comment is a recognition that Parliament is supreme, and can undo whatever it so chooses from parliaments past.
Section 268 of the Electoral Act is not something from a Parliament past. Its entrenching provisions exists because New Zealanders adopted them in a referendum in 1993.
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After about a week, Robinson Crusoe achieved a singular honour. It became the first set text I didn't make it to the end of.
As an assignment of a course at university - review a book on the (non-fiction) topic of the course - I reviewed the course' set text without having read it. I didn't throw it, but it was a bit of a laugh...
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I don't see why this would be contentious
Re-writing electoral law to obviate the need to hold an election that is legally required to happen is always on the dodgy side.
If I recall correctly National said at the time that they would have supported the law if it only applied to Duynhoven. It was instead written to apply to everyone in Parliament at the time. Labour even opposed an amendment from the National Party (and other opposition parties) that would have excluded National members from the protections the law afforded.
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I think parliament shouldn't move parliament into urgency for political convenience. Legislation that urgently needs to be passed, OK, but that's a much smaller list.
It depends how urgent the urgency is. Urgency can just be used as a mechanism for extending Parliament's sitting hours (though it would be good if it didn't also disrupt other ordinary business). The fact that a large number of bills get sent to select committees before Parliament rises at the end of each year isn't really that galling.
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Oh wait, haha, my mistake. It was in fact a profile of Peter Davis, the Prime Minister's husband. Perfectly acceptable questions, then, eh?
You need Peter Williams.
When asked by Paul Henry this morning to ask Steve Williams how much he was worth, he said the question was "vulgar" (nice use of the word too), and refused to ask it.
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I'm not sure about parliament, but typically you would set aside standing orders in order to do something out-of-the-ordinary but which everyone supports.
Typically, yes. Someone stands up and seeks leave that a standing order be set aside to allow something - leave will often br granted to allow a non-controversial motion (e.g. the appointment of someone to audit the Parliamentary Service) to pe passed without debate. Leave was granted to allow the select committee into the EFA to expand its membership to inlclude all parties, etc (though this may not have technically involved a suspension of a standing order).
There are occasions (where there is not unanimous support) that suspension of standing orders happens by motion on notice (they put it on the order paper in advance and then have a discussion in the House about whether to do it or not). I can recall two occasions in the last Parliament (I'm sure there were others too). Both involved expanding the scope of a bill in its late stages.
Standing orders provide that you can't amend a bill beyond its scope (if you've introduced a bill to amend an aspect of the Broadcasting Act relating to NZ on Air, ACT can't move an amendment to split TVNZ into separate commercial and non-commercial companies - you have to introduce a seperate bill and go through the full process with it).
The latest I remember was the Employment Relations Amendment bill which introduced infant feeding breaks and guarenteed paid coffee breaks. At the Committee of the whole stage (or after or between it, I don't recall), the Government moved to suspend that standing order to allow them to introduce into it an unrelated amendment related to kiwisaver (stopping employers paying those in kiwisaver less than those not in it).