Posts by BenWilson
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OnPoint: #WTFMSD: "Damning", in reply to Sacha,
rather different ethical/legal implications
Yup, technically. Practically, no one would ever know. If you decided to let them know, you could tell them that you only kept MD5s of the data for proof of existence purposes. You could even do exactly that, if you were a stickler.
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OnPoint: #WTFMSD: "Damning", in reply to Keith Ng,
Yes (I think).
Next time (:-)) keep a hold-off set of unimportant/irrelevant data that you don't tell them you ever got. Then you can check whether they are lying about being able to detect what you took. Two scoops for the price of one.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Steven Peters,
Yes I think Maori loyalties are divided across party lines. Its quite a complex subject really, the Maori vote. The Maori party recently decided to change their strategy, and not ignore the party vote in future, as they have been doing, which may go some way to explain their low party vote.
Only if they manage to change this fact. I think that the Maori vote is no more complicated than any minority ethnic vote. The simple fact is that representative democracy is not the same as single issue democracy. You want that, you need direct democracy. Representatives can and do present a bundle of views, taking little bits from many demographics. That's how it works, and it's how it's designed to work. It's a practical system, that understands that the decisions made by the body politic are constant, many and varied, and governance doesn't just boil down to blindly following a manifesto generated up to three years before the problems arise.
To fail to understand this is to remain mystified as to why minority ethnic groups are underrepresented (party-wise) even under working proportional representation, and why, for example, an issue like cannabis law reform can never get any representation at all, even if an actual majority of people support it. They just don't want to make that the only thing they voted on in an election.
Single issue groups tend to only gain traction for a while, until the questions they raised are addressed. So you can get a powerful ethnic minority party gaining a large number of seats, but then the major parties address those issues, and the support for the minor parties wanes. This is the system working, not entrenched racism. It's one of the things MMP addresses, one of the best effects of it.
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OnPoint: #WTFMSD: "Damning", in reply to Idiot Savant,
I wonder how much they got paid for that?
My bet is that it's a lot more than Keith or Ira did, and they actually found and reported the bloody problem.
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BTW, good on you, Keith, for trying to find out how Bailey was outed to Sleazy Slater. And good luck.
I love how "no evidence of other breaches" can be used in this context to actually appear as a positive. There's no evidence because there is no possible way to collect evidence, other than people coming forward and reporting that they committed an act that could possibly be a crime. If Keith and Ira hadn't come forward, there would be "no evidence of any breach at all", but it would obviously still have happened.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Steven Peters,
On top of that, they have to pass 5%
They don't, and they never have. They only need to win one of the Maori Seats and use the coat-tailing mechanism, if it would help. It never has helped, because they don't get anywhere near enough party vote. So far, they've always had overhangs, meaning they are overrepresented, proportionally. If you want an example of unfair proportional representation, the Maori Party is exactly the wrong example to choose.
What you struggle to explain is why less than a quarter of Maori have ever voted for the Maori Party. Why even in Maori electorates, where only Maori are allowed to vote at all, the Maori Party isn't just a shoo-in against Labour, who you claim don't represent Maori in any way, shade, manner or form. Riddle me that.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Steven Peters,
I think this points to the underlying racism of our society, and our electoral system.
I don't think so. It points to society not seeing everything through the lens of ethnicity. There are more than enough Maori to push a Maori Party across the PVT, if they really thought it represented them, and no one else does. That doesn't happen, though. Why? If it's racism, then it's racism by Maori, against Maori that is at work here. I don't buy it. I say Maori who don't vote for the Maori Party (which is most of them) need a lot of explaining in your way of understanding representation.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Steven Peters,
Hell no. I do not believe claiming or belonging to a particular ethnicity, is sufficient grounds to believe that someone 'represents members of this ethnicity'. That is a very dangerous assumption to make, IMHO.
You're conflating "an important factor" with "a sufficient factor". They're not the same. As I already pointed out, sufficiency is a very, very strict criterion, to the point that representation can't be said to be perfectly sufficient unless it is the individuals themselves doing it.
The most crucial factor, and arguably the only genuinely democratic one, is when "a pol. party claims that they seek to represent the interests and aspirations of (our) ethnic group"
Right, and both National and Labour make that claim, for nearly every group. Which means that's a pretty easily satisfied criterion, a box that has to be ticked but isn't really very hard to tick.
You seem to think that criterion is that the party claims to represent the aspirations of the ethnic group to the exclusion of all other interests. But that's your interpretation. I think it's perfectly possible for a group to represent multiple interests. Indeed even a purely ethnic representative will be doing so, in practice, since the ethnic group itself is formed from multiple interests, often in direct conflict with one another - rich vs poor, men vs women, religion vs religion, etc.
In this country, it would be very difficult for any ethnic group, except of course pakeha, to be able to do this and reach the 5% threshold.
Yup, outside of the top 4 ethnicities (depending how you slice them. It's not like Pakeha are one united people, and it's not like "Asian" is a coherent group), it would be impossible even for a massively reduced threshold. Which practically means there will never be an Indian party, a Mongolian Party, a Tongan Party, a Brazilian Party, a Torres Straights Islanders Party, etc. These minorities will never get representation in the form of a party all to themselves in NZ. That does not mean they will never get any representation at all. It can turn out that a Chinese businessman feels his interests are actually most closely met by, for instance, the National Party, and he can't stand anyone in a party that claims to stand for Chinese exclusively. I know several Maori who feel this way about the Maori Party.
Well I think the history of our political system proves that if you are able to elect a representative that will represent you will improve your lot.
Not sure, because you are disputing the meaning of "representing" and "representative". There isn't a successful party in NZ that claims to stand only for Pakeha interests, and yet Pakeha tend to have the best lot. Makes me think (again) that your conception of representation isn't on the money.
The only thing I ask of the electoral system is exactly what you say
Heh. It's been fun quibbling over little details, especially since you're a new contributor here. You wanted a good run, so I've given it, but in the end, we're in agreement.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Steven Peters,
In the last 20years, the security council has proved impotent time and again to act against gross abuses of human rights, and is losing its losing its legitimacy within the UN, the community of nations
It's been that way right from the start. Indeed, the security council is not so much impotent against gross abuses of human right, but has actively blocked action against them if they happened within their perceived sphere of influence, and that has been from the word Go. There were massive numbers of vetoes by the Russians in the early history, as they aggressively expanded the Soviet Union.
Electorates are first past the post - I though you were pro MMP?
I am, and electorates are part of MMP. The fact that they create a lower effective threshold is the only thing I like about the electorate system, and would happily see it go, so long as similar or better threshold balancing were achieved by another mechanism, probably the PVT.
I think one equal vote per individual participant in national elections is an excellent model for democratic nations.
When the individuals are in some way equal, yes. In our system, for instance, the electorates are all roughly the same size, so the MPs get the same vote power. But even small amounts of gerrymandering are perceived as grossly unfair here, and what happens in the UN takes it several orders of magnitude further. It only doesn't matter because it's not a parliament. It's not a democratic system, doesn't work on majoritarianism. So it's not really a useful model for a parliament. That's really all I want to say on the UN, it's so off topic for MMP reform it's not funny.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Steven Peters,
But like any established system of power, will not be easy.
Or indeed, might not ever happen. The need for this has been urgent for 50 years now.
Yes I believe that all nations in the UN General Assembly should have one equal vote each, as they do.
I didn't question that, I question whether it's a useful model for a democratic nation.
That is what the United Nations has done, provided a forum for the constitution of moral laws, ie..or human rights.
Yup, it's a forum, not a parliament. This is also a forum and some of the things we discuss pass into law. Eventually, if the actual governments decide to do so.
I don't believe minority groups in the big parties can break off and form viable new parties. The pv threshold is to high to be viable.
Except...it has happened several times. They just have to win an electorate.
As the Royal Commission pointed out... Ones ethnicity is not a claim for representing an ethnic group.
I'm not sure you're reading that correctly, and would still disagree with it, even if you are. One's ethnicity is surely one of the most important factors in deciding whether one represents an ethnicity. It's not sufficient, sure, indeed there is no quality that makes a person a sufficient representative of anyone except themselves. But it's a very, very good start.
Yes someone may seek to form a 'Women's Party', if the threshold was lower, it might be viable.
women have increased their presence in the halls of power, but how has that translated into equality for women?
While I think equality is a good thing, it's never been the stated purpose of the electoral system to achieve it. There's never been any guarantee that being able to elect a representative that represents you will improve your lot. The electoral system can aim only for equality of representation, it's up to the representatives (and everyone else, for that matter) to be seeking other kinds of equality.
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