Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Legal Beagle: A submission on the…, in reply to izogi,
Has any new party ever entered parliament under MMP without either a defecting MP or benevolent (but really strategic) help from a big party that's more interested in gaming the system?
Every successful new party has had an existing or former MP in it.
Benevolent help has never worked by itself.
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Legal Beagle: A Small Official…, in reply to FletcherB,
I understand that that's kind of what happened. The formal reply to the request was as tweeted, which was followed up by a call from someone in the media team saying that the information did not exist (which is a proper ground under the OIA to refuse to release information. The reply was apparently as it was as they "didn't want to set a precedent".
I'm not sure it would have, and am also aware of a time the Chief Justice responded to an OIA request.
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Legal Beagle: If Australia Jumped off a…, in reply to Craig Young,
I prefer a written constitution to referenda
If we ever get a written constitution, it will be voted in at a referendum :-)
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Legal Beagle: If Australia Jumped off a…, in reply to Craig Young,
Binding referenda are, as Graeme says, a waste of money and there are other, far graver public policy priorities for urgent expenditure
Please note that I am only saying that *non-binding* referendums are wastes of money.
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Legal Beagle: On citizen’s arrests; or…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Is there perhaps some Law that states failure to prevent a crime from happening is in itself a crime????
Only very specific ones: failure to alert the authorities to treason; failure to protect a child or vulnerable adult (eg knowing of child abuse as a parent and doing nothing, or knowing of serious elder abuse in a rest home as a person working in that home and doing nothing.
There is no general legal obligation to report crimes, or to cooperate with police, etc.
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Legal Beagle: On citizen’s arrests; or…, in reply to izogi,
Could that ever amount to kidnapping under the Crimes Act or would it be more like a traffic offence?
I obviously have no idea what happened, but the basic requirements for kidnapping are detaining someone with the intent of them being confined.
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Legal Beagle: On citizen’s arrests; or…, in reply to EliotBlennerhassett,
Paragraph 3 seems to be truncated?
Do you mean paragraph 4, if so, I fixed it before you read it, but presumably not before you opened the tab :-)
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Legal Beagle: Questions, but no answers,…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Here’s some examples of how National dealt with the same type of questioning from WP in the last term
And if Labour had objected, there's a good chance I'd have written a blog post supporting them.
I can't fix what happened in past Parliaments, but I can try to make sure it doesn't happen again!
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Legal Beagle: Questions, but no answers,…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Although the sentiment regarding open governance is right – the practical application is fraught with exceptions. Diarised medical appointments, meetings with ones personal lawyers over say, a property transaction, etc. etc.
Medical appointments are not ministerial.
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Legal Beagle: Questions, but no answers,…, in reply to linger,
I appreciate the self-referentiality of (presumably) the word “redacted” being redacted here, but I suspect it wasn’t intentional?
Withheld. Thanks :-)