Posts by Andrew Geddis
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Hi Graeme,
Your headings "Arbitrariness in sentencing dates" and "Home detention" are mixed up.
Otherwise, it's great. I haven't written anything yet. Can I join yours?
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Legal Beagle: Pandemic Preparedness and…, in reply to simon g,
There won't be a "snap" election (i.e. one held before Sept 19) - that would bring the election date forward into the period when Covid-19 is most likely to be here. If anything, there will be a delay to the election date, which Ardern would negotiate with Bridges and others (I'm sure).
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Legal Beagle: Pandemic Preparedness and…, in reply to Moz,
You are misinformed, and appear to be mixing up the Senate with the House. 1/3rd of the Senate is elected every 2 years. But the entire House is elected every two years. See here: https://ballotpedia.org/California%27s_12th_Congressional_District_election,_2020
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Legal Beagle: Pandemic Preparedness and…, in reply to Moz,
Depends what we mean by"electronic voting". If it's the sort currently used for overseas voters - download a ballot, print it, fill it out, scan it back in and send electronically to the Electoral Commission - then there's no real security concerns (or, none that are any greater than the current way we vote).
If it's full online voting, then run away screaming (https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/116496911/why-it-will-never-be-possible-to-have-a-completely-protected-online-voting).
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Legal Beagle: Pandemic Preparedness and…, in reply to Moz,
This is broadly true, but for the bit about the presidency devolving to Nancy Pelosi on 20 January.
Because, the Constitution also says that:
Art 1: "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States", and
Art 20: "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin."So - if there's been no election to choose a new President, then there won't have been an election to choose new members of Congress, so Pelosi's term will have ended 17 days before Trump's and there'll be no-one to replace her and everything is stuffed.
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“Yes, there are rules (also updated last week) about what to do if there is an ‘unforeseen or unavoidable disruption’ to an election. They’re mostly designed to deal with short-term, or localised disruptions (think earthquake or particularly bad weather), and only once an election has been called, but they could be used during an epidemic.”
As someone involved in the policy formulation behind these legislative changes, I think this is characterisation of them is wrong. The possibility of a national disruption, potentially lengthy in nature, was very much considered and included in the changes. Hence the initial 3 day suspension power + recurrent 7 day extensions + wide discretion in using alternative voting processes as needed.
A hint that such considerations were at the forefront of thinking on the changes is that one of the potential triggers for the powers under the Act is: “an epidemic notice given under section 5(1) of the Epidemic Preparedness Act 2006 being in force”
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"And yet, what the Powerstation owners did was potentially a breach of the Bill of Rights Act."
Human Rights Act. NZ BoRA only applies to public actors.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
The only problem with this post is that it ignores rule 97 of New Zealand politics: If Murray McCully were involved in organising a fund-raising sausage sizzle for his local hospice, he would find a way to find it corruptly.
Of course, if rule 97 is in operation, the legitimacy of every cent of NZ's foreign aid is in question. So why don't we have any Taxpayer Union press releases about the Vanuatu Tourism Infrastructure Project, or the Pacific Regional Navigation Initiative, or the Tonga Police Development Programme?
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to MxDEJ,
Alica Burrow
She isn't a Herald reporter - she works for Newstalk ZB.
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Hard News: Taxpayers' Union: still…, in reply to MxDEJ,
Yep – the “story” came down off the Herald website in remarkably quick time. It always was a cross-post from this still extant Newstalk ZB piece (http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/politics/nz-taxpayers-money-used-to-fund-clinton-foundation/ ).
But I’m guessing that with all the “synergies” and “cross platform content” stuff, editors actually checking that a story is accurate before posting it up takes second place to potential clicks.