Written By: - Date published: 5:02 pm, September 28th, 2008 - 52 comments
Categories: election 2008, maori party, national -
Tags: electoral law
National have quietly released their policy on electoral law and have promised to abolish the Maori seats once treaty claims are finished, repeal the Electoral Finance Act and run a referendum on MMP.
These all represent substantial changes to the way our democracy operates.
I’ll be very interested to see what the Maori Party make of the abolition of seats. I’d also like to know what kind of electoral law they envisage replacing the EFA because I have a bad feeling it won’t involve transparency and the removal of anonymous donations. I sincerely hope our media push for details about the Nat’s plans for electoral law because it’s too important to see it taken back to the days of the shadowy backrooms.
Regarding the plan to run a referendum on MMP, I can only repeat what I said when the Nat’s intentions for MMP first came to light:
I would imagine we’ll hear a lot about how National just support the democratic right to choose an electoral system while their backers run big money campaigns to push first past the post.
Just in case you missed it the first time around here’s a video showing exactly what that meant
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RE: The Maori party, National, and the maori seats.
They appear to view it as some kind of bizarre political suicide.
“Campbell : Having said that, and given we haven’t seen all of National’s policy hand yet – can you imagine anything they might propose that would count as a bridge too far in preventing you from going into government with National ?
Harawira : Getting rid of the Maori seats. That’d be a bridge too far. A refusal to allow us to be a player at the table.
Campbell : Have you had any communications from National that the abolition of the Maori seats or anything else would be off the table ?
Harawira : We’re hearing that sort of thing informally all the time. And we understand that’s on the basis of political analysis that if all the Maori seats were to flow back into the general seats they would all vote Labour – in sufficient numbers and in sufficient seats that National wouldn’t rule again for another 30 years. “
And just for the record I expect all the coverage will be in the mode of “what will this mean for a Maori Party deal with National” and none will address the actual role of the Maori seats in our democracy.
I’d like the gallery to prove me wrong but I doubt they will.
No, Irish, you’re wrong. All the coverage is about some American film star who has died.
I wish my captcha was priorities akimbo, but it aint.
Bill, that’s because National released this late on a Sunday afternoon. It seems a deliberate attempt to downplay the policy as news of it will be more than 24 hours old by the time the sixes go to air again.
Come on, the press release is timed 3:13 PM – our “premier news channel” can’t get it on the air in 2 and 3/4 hours?
For Buddah’s sake, you spotted it, I spotted it. It was probably sent straight to them!
They’re a joke.
Perhaps as an RVO but it takes time to shoot interviews get covershots and edit. Sunday afternoon is also a bad time to try to chase up talent which is clear from the lack of balancing opinion in any of the stories thus far. And it seems there was no public launch on this. just a media release and that makes it even harder to get pictures.
“that National wouldn’t rule again for another 30 years”
Oh dear how sad! How old will Key, English, Brownlee be then?
Hey look you guys…the media know everything. What they dont know isnt worth knowing. dont knock them they might get a black mark on ther c.v.’s when they finally decide to scuttle off and then they will cry and blub.
Brilliant polices!!!, a referendum is needed on MMP, why have seats based on race? and get rid of the sickening electoral finance act.
Well done to John Key.
Brett, what does MMP have to do with the Maori seats?
The EFA needs cleaning up but getting rid of it would be counter productive.
FYI – I heard about the policies on the 2pm news on Newstalk ZB, and blogged about it soon after. The decision to repeal the EFA is no surprise – Key talked about that in the third reading debate on the EFA last year. Nor should the referendum on MMP – this was signalled months ago. What is significant is that it will be a BINDING referendum – I can’t imagine Labour giving the peasants a chance to speak like that.
But heck – you guys slag National off for not releasing policy, then when they do, you slag them off all over again. Kind of says something doesn’t it.
http://keepingstock.blogspot.com/2008/09/nationals-electoral-law-policy.html
IrishBill – According to Key they are going to abolish the EFA, replace electoral law with the old act in the mean time, except keeping the EFA’s provisions on anonymous donations and eventually put in place a new electoral law using a bi-partisan approach. Seems fair enough to me. Electoral law should never be solely decided by the party in power at the time for obvious reasons.
Greg, I read that after I wrote my post. If they really do abolish anonymous donations including donations from trusts I’ll be very happy. I’ll be particularly interested to see what they want to do with the campaign period. My preference is to keep it at a year.
I’d also like to see where they stand on full public funding.
National’s stated policies are a clear rejection of Brash’s Orewa speech. They also require significant increases in public spending. So there are two obvious questions for the media to put to John Key: “Are you now apologising for Orewa, and acknowledging it was always a fraud?” and “Where’s the money coming from, and how much?”.
But I’m guessing we won’t be hearing those questions. I hope I’m wrong.
The relevant policy lines (from National’s press release), and my comments in italics:
* Putting a big focus on investment in education (spending taxes), including national standards, trades in schools, our Youth Guarantee, promoting greater participation in early childhood education through Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa, and expanding Te Kotahitanga. Orewa’s “race-based” programmes
* Improving health and housing outcomes for Maori, including working with Maori health providers and Maori collectives on housing. again, Orewa
* Working to increase investment in Maori assets and enterprises, including working with iwi enterprises and their leaders to help overcome barriers to economic development. so, both taxes and Orewa
* Acknowledging the importance of Maori language and culture, including committing to Maori broadcasting and the promotion of Maori language, arts and culture. how? how much money?
* Working with Te Puni Kokiri to strengthen and expand successful and proven Maori-led programmes to advance outcomes for Maori. more Orewa, and more bureaucrats
There’s so much there for real political journalists to get their teeth into. If only New Zealand had some.
Sorry, the third one should not be all italics, it’s their policy.
Draco T Bastard
I was commenting on all three polices as separately.
I know MMP has nothing to do with the Maori seats.
I only hope National has a tough law and order policy, it seems the Standard’s members favorite little friend, has breached parole again, still Im guessing those on the left, don’t think it’s Bailey’s junior fault.
Under a National government, the public would be kept safe from the likes of him.
how do you know that brett dale. are you privy to their lauranorder policy. did jokey tell you that specifically. get a grip man.
Really, Brett? Are you saying that a National government will have the power to keep someone in prison, even after their sentence has finished? The government will override the courts? No need to bother with trials and other inconveniences?
Now that really would be a drift to Mugabe rule. God only knows how many treaties and laws they’d be breaking.
Nope, but National will have the power to make sure that people like Bailey stay in Prison longer, where he should be.
Brett, you’re really declining in your ability to post credible comments.
What’s Danna Glendinning (I notice the video spells her name wrongly :-/) doing these days? Still at Greens HQ? I’m surprised she doesn’t feature on the Greens’ list (unless of course she doesn’t want to) as she’s an impressive person…. one of those who, like Rod Donald, you may disagree with on some issues but would never doubt their earnestness and good intentions, nor their mastery of the subject matter.
Back on topic… I’d be interested to hear what the people who supported MMP back then feel about the way it’s working now. I’d hope that the pragmatic and honest amongst them would agree that it’s fixed a lot of problems but has created others (most notably the fact that list MPs are beholden only to the list rankers which, in every party bu the Greens, are a relatively small coterie) and that there is no requirement on parties to make the ranking process open, fair, democratic or even (as was proven by the case I took against NZF in 1996) non-fraudulent!
There’s no way I’d want to see a return to FPP. But I do believe we need a debate on the electoral system, which should centre on fixing MMP’s flaws (and they can easily be fixed) or introducing some other form of proportional representation.
Well, Rex, MMP is working better than I expected it would. I’d worked out by the time I was 15 (1984 election) that FPP was completely undemocratic as it would predominately return minority governments. Can’t say I was overly knowledgeable about politics at the time of the referendum but it was definitely time, and past time, to change the electoral system.
We do need to discuss the present system and its flaws – we need to agree on what the flaws are before we can do anything about them. IMO, get rid of all electorate seats, drop the threshold percentage down and make the lists open selection. This does have the problem that independents won’t be able to be elected but then, they don’t get elected anyway as, IMO, most people would consider voting for them to be a wasted vote. I still don’t like being beholden to political parties, especially when you consider that they are becoming less connected to the populace as their members decrease, but I suppose we will have to until such time as we become a participatory democracy (which I don’t see happening for another few decades).
MMP in New Zealand isn’t working and that’s mostly because the country is getting pulled either to the hard right or to the hard left, by the fringe partners.
If the two centrist parties actually got together (Yes a LAB/NAT grand coalition) and worked together, we would be in a lot better place than we currently are. There would be no fringe loonies (JAPP, NZF, Greens, ACT, etc) pulling us off kilter.
If they wanted to overhaul MMP, why not reduce the party vote threshold down to 1%, reduce the number of MMP’s down to 100 and abolish the electorate seats ? The Maori seat’s wouldn’t be needed then either as as long as they got there % of vote high enough, they get the representation they deserve.
None of this overhang BS.
And the true attack on democracy was the introduction of the EFA, it should have been a bi-partisan agreement – not just one parties party toy.
Just another thought for you all: There is a difference between a stated policy and what might be a “bottom line” for post-election negotiations.
Why would the National Party, by this point expecting to be having to work with the Maori Party to form a government, throw away such a good bargaining chip as the maori seats before the negotiations?
The semantics of the policy seem to be the kicker here – abolish Maori seats once treaty claims are settled (By 2014?).
sounds to me like a sensible approach to tie the two together.
vidiot are you advocating a one-party-state?
If so, there’s really be no need to overhaul electoral law…
Felix – not a one party state, just one where the vast majority of voters get truly represented in. None of this the party that can cobble together 50.1% of the voter support wins crap, hell that’s FPP mentality.
Attack on democracy? My backside!
No reason to have parliamentary seats based on race (SP, were you a supporter of apartheid?).
Maori should be able to run for Parliament on equal terms with any other New Zealand citizen.
About time this anachronism is abolished.
Felix, vidiot
Jenny Shippley proposed the idea of a Lab/Nat coalition. It was an ‘off the cuff’ remark shown on TV a few years back but never pursued by the media.
Was it an outrageous idea or merely an acknowledgement that for all intent purposes we already live in a one policy, two party state?
Both parties adhere to the neo-liberal economic doctrine and differences lie only in the delivery. (Labour merely softens the edges.)
A Lab/Nat coalition would be do-able, except that the façade that we live in a democracy would be gone. Therefore it’s not going to happen.
Anyway, on topic, that policy reads like a big ‘gimmie’ to the Maori Party on first read. A fair bit of it suggests autonomy in a number of areas, which is what Hone Harawira was arguing for in his interview with Gordon Campbell over at Scoop. It’s probably worth reading that interview in conjunction with the policy release for a bit of added insight.
Look, everyone knows what the Maori seats policy is. It’s a “Taiwan game”.
Taiwan is, officially, the government of China, according to Taiwan.
They will never try and implement this policy (suicide). They don’t scrap the policy (domestic politics). They just nod and wink, and the world gets the message, and so Taiwan and China trade and go to the Olympics and all that, while the fiction remains that there are two governments of China, which nobody believes.
National have kept their policy, and won’t implement it. That’s all.
vidiot,
While I agree with bill that your idea would be a more honest way of doing what already happens, I want more representation for everyone – not just the majority.
>>>Both parties adhere to the neo-liberal economic doctrine and differences lie only in the delivery. (Labour merely softens the edges.)<<<
That “softening of the edges” represents the difference between the the Employment Relations Act and the Employment Contracts Act, between minimum wage increases and no minimum wage increases, between the rebuilding of economic infrastructure and letting it rot, and between interest-free student loans and charging interest on students while they are studying.
Anyone who makes the claim that “Labour and National are really just the same” has rocks in their head.
Repeal the Electoral Finance Act and run a referendum on MMP. Yep that’s crazy stuff. Imagine not having partisan electoral funding laws and letting the people decide what election system they want to use – madness – it will never catch on and Labour wouldn’t dare copy a policy like this…..
National’s real attach on Democracy is their EFA complaint by Pansy Wong’s team against Kenneth Wang in Botany Downs.
So much for the Nat’s supporting freedom of expression during and election.