Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6: Afternoons with Jim Mora
64 Responses
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I dont see how Gordon Mclaughins comment that Gillard is only there because of the voting system can possibly pass muster.
A quick check of wikipedia gives labour 50.12% and Liberal National coalition 49.88%. These are a strange beast called two party preferred totals
You would very much hope that the party with the largest share of the votes gets to form a government. So Julia wins on that basis.
What their voting system did do is NOT give them a majority of the MPs. However Julia again won the support of a majority of independent MpsAgain if you look at the official AEC figures for 'first preference votes' you get Labour with 38% and the Greens 11.76% to give 49.7% and on the other side Liberals and the Nationals got 43.3% in total well short of the left side.
Labour and the Greens arent in a formal coalition but its the only way to play it.Could Gordan have got his information from preliminary two party preferred vote from the first few days after the election, which did give Abbott the edge. The more exhaustive recheck with postal votes counted only comes out after some weeks and gave the result above.
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Steve Curtis, in reply to
The NAZIS came in via a preferential system.
Nope. Proportional. The change after the war was to introduce electorates (and the new threshold, I think)
The Nazis also had the support of "the 1%" which seems to been enough on top of the 33% they got in the Nov 32 election to make Hitler the Chancellor after some manoeuvring .
The voting system of the time seemed to be based on proportional by regions , or wahlkreise, rather than smaller electorates -
Looking more closely at MMP in Germany, its a far more complicated beast than the MMP we use in NZ.
The first postwar election there doesnt seem to have been two votes, if you voted for a person , you voted for their party as well. This continued in some lander up until 2010.
Bavaria uses regional party lists for the second vote but your 2nd vote is for a person on that list.
Baden Wurttemburg doesnt have lists at all for the second vote, but uses a best near winner over the 4 regions of the state, which choses the highest polling electorate candidate of a particular party who didnt win.
That is if you were the highest polling ACT candidate who didnt win you would get in on the party 'list' behind any ACT candidate who won an electorate - I think ? -
Germany has a republican cultural history.
This could be read as a tribal history of sorts.
This thought raises the question that no one wants to ask about the elephant in the room.
Do we need to have Maori Seats under MMP?
We have The Maori Party.
We have The Mana Party, including Bradford and Minto.
We have Winston Peters.
We have Maori representatives in the Greens (like their leader).
I am led to believe that other political parties have Maoris within their ranks.
Under FPP, and under the social history prior to MMP Maori seats made some sort of sense.Given an MMP universal franchise democracy society how can Maori seats be justified?
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
The myth of the hard working minister must be maintained, 19 hours a day 7 days a week you know.
When I were a lad you used to have to have a proper job to be prime minister, not one of those mamby pamby fruit machine type jobs, you used to be able to, at least, be able to speak to people and tell them what you believed in, at least, at the very least.
I fear that we get less than that. -
merc,
Apparently we are in crises time, he said so. The dumb, it hurts.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
This thought raises the question that no one wants to ask about the elephant in the room.
Do we need to have Maori Seats under MMP?
We have The Maori Party.
We have The Mana Party, including Bradford and Minto.
You really think no-one's talking about this? Here maybe not. But it's very common elsewhere.
And in reply to your observation: we have the Maori Party because of the Maori seats. We have the Mana Party because of the Maori seats. With a 5% threshold, direct representation of Maori in Parliament without Maori seats will likely be much diminished. This may be one reason that the Royal Commission recommended that parties representing Maori interests shouldn't have a threshold. It was on that basis that they recommended that if we were to go to MMP, then the Maori seats should be abolished.
Given an MMP universal franchise democracy society how can Maori seats be justified?
I would also note that we are going through a process to determine whether we should keep MMP. It might be that we would adopt a different system, under which the Maori seats may play a different role.
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The Māori seats under MMP have helped mitigate the low enrolment rate and electoral turnout of Māori voters. Ideally government would work harder on getting disenfranchised minority groups to vote, but out here in the real world they don't, for various reasons, some of which are even principled.
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Graeme, there was another misleading discussion about MMP on JM's Panel today. (And one new panel member complaining that no parties are looking at the long term - she obviously hasn't noticed that's about all Labour is doing). Anyhow Tim Watkin and Jim Mora said repeatedly that the Epsom 'cup of tea deal' would reflect badly on MMP. If they had been accurate they would have said that all electoral systems are open to manipulation if parties are determined to do that, for example doing deals on who gets selected as candidates, who stands against them, how you set electoral boundaries etc.
Just as Jim or his producers (or who knows who) manipulates who gets to be a panellist on his show.
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martinb, in reply to
and a personal army in the streets, after a campaign of political assassination.
I have heard this argument before- proportional is part of the European weakness that allowed the Nazis in.
I'm calling crap and lazy argument on this. Any democracy can be subverted when it's institutions grow weak. There were checks on Nazi power. They failed, again and again.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
all electoral systems are open to manipulation if parties are determined to do that, for example doing deals on who gets selected as candidates, who stands against them, how you set electoral boundaries etc.
And if what is happening in Epsom were a Cricket match then the two Johns would be on suspension, at least, for Match Fixing.
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David Hood, in reply to
There must be a suitable name for that wonderful condition…
Helpphilia
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I’m calling crap and lazy argument on this. Any democracy can be subverted when it’s institutions grow weak. There were checks on Nazi power. They failed, again and again.
Florida and the hanging chads in 2000 was something of a farcical example of this.
Apparently we are in crises time, he said so. The dumb, it hurts.
I.e., disaster capitalism.
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merc, in reply to
I.e., disaster capitalism.
= CERA
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