Posts by Idiot Savant
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Spamming the ballot? Wouldn't do too much harm. But I think if we want Parliament to be able to act more like a legislature rather than just a rubberstamp for the executive, then we need to go further, and have members days happening every week, not just every two. The opposition may still lose the vote on their bills, but they'd at least get a chance to debate them and try and build a coalition behind them.
And on that latter point, I should point out that a) members bills are not the only way of advancing your party's interests through legislation; and b) National has been spectacularly bad at it. Throughout the last term they have had several golden opportunities to build coalitions around themselves to amend government legislation to reflect their views. They have failed to do so. This isn't a case of the process being stacked in favour of the government; this is simply National being bad at the game. The next Parliamentary term looks like it will offer the same opportunities, and whoever ends up in government, National is going to have to get a lot better at coalition building, either in order to advance its legislative programme intact, or to subvert Labour's.
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Groan. How exactly do either of these things undermine anyone's moral values? Are all strongly-held values suddenly out the window when they are no longer enforced in/through law?
Because pretty clearly, they let other people sin without punishment.
The post-enlightenment view that that's between you and whatever spiritual entities you do or don't believe in (or who wil eat your brains regardless) is utterly lost on them. instead, they cling to a medieval, theocratic conception of the state as an arm of the church, with a key role of enforcing (their perverse conception of) virtue.
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Matthew: to echo Keir, you're forgetting the uber-convention: the monarch (and hence the Governor-General) acts only on the advice of elected ministers. Or else we cut off their sock budget - or historically, their head.
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Rich: and all of those things could be dealt with incrementally. The bills for several (codifying the powers of the Governor-General and clarifying that they have no power to refuse assent) have already been drafted and are floating round (and after the election, once the dust settles, maybe we should start looking for some MPs to pimp them; at the least it will open up the debate).
One advantage of incrementalism is that you only have to win one argument at a time. Wheras trying to do everything at once means you have to win them all. It's slower, but we'll get there in the end.
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I find that most people who say "We need a written constitution" really mean "We need Parliament to be constrained, somehow, in what they can do to our rights."
Usually. Though sometimes they mean "we should have a constitutional structure which mirrors my whacko theory of the week", which is a whole different kettle of fish. But there's no blank slate in a stable, democratic society - you need to persuade people that your change is necessary. And on that front, the natural approach is constitutional incrementalism, not radical US-centric blank-slatery.
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Personally I'd go down to my room of gold coins, and frolick like Scrooge McDuck.
Scrooge preferred notes; coins were for burrowers.
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Concrete proposal for entrenchment here.
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And if National lead a four-headed coalition (with Dunne, Act and the Maori Party), is that something less than a monster?
Four heads good, five heads bad?
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Dave: Excuse me; I'm flat out wrong; I apologise; the Maori option is in s76 - 78.
Stil, if we entrench that, then any repeal of s45 would effectively strip maori of any Parliamentary representation. Good luck making that fly.
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Graeme: apologies; I thought you were suggesting it was a novel piece of law.
I agree; while it can technically be circumvented, the fact that it has been passed by a referendum should be seen as binding Parliament. After all, they work for us (swivel on that, Dicey!)