Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, November 28th, 2008 - 41 comments
Categories: election funding -
Tags: frogblog
Frogblog reports:
The Green Party initiative to have electoral reform reviewed and managed by a citizens’ jury has been scrapped by the National government today. While not surprising, it does mean that electoral reform falls back into the hands of the politicians – putting the wolves back in charge of the hen house. The press release came at the usual ‘don’t look now’ time of 4 pm on a Friday, a trick that both National and Labour use to hide unpopular announcements.
Attack on democracy, eh?
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Scoopit!
So wait… they’re dismissing the citizen’s jury and experts’ panel on electoral law, most likely very consultative and non-partisan methods of review… in order for a more multipartisan review?
Yeah, obviously a beatup. *rolls eyes*
Ari
Perhaps if the Greens had not voted for the EFA they could take the high ground.
What happened to those convenient easy-to-use editing functions? They were there at 11:19pm.
Will the Govt trash every idea that is not their own? So Working for Families should be trashed for no other reason than Labour thought of it? Sounds petulent to me.
There was a citizens’ jury used by Wellington City Council in the 90s about whether to sell Capital Power (the WCC’s own power company – and how wealthy we would be if we had kept it!). I can’t remember what happened to the process (and I think the decision came out strongly against the sale) but the new mayor Mark Blumsky went ahead and sold it anyway for idealogical reasons.
How about a Royal Commission on the whole shebang? Funny, over the past twenty years, I have heard politicians banging on about “agency theory” and the idea of those with an interest in the outcome influencing an outcome. In keeping with the politicians’ paranoia, I suggest letting politicians anywhere near the electoral process is likely to end in a result that is compromised. The community’s interest in an electoral process is slightly different to the interests of politicians. It is time for a fundamental consideration about all aspects of our electoral system. Getting a Royal Commission in place would be an effective way of ensuring the politicians’ influence is moderated. The only caveat is to not let politicians set the TOR. That’s precisely how we ended up with MMP. Palmer skewed the TOR to favour “strong parties” and from that little acorn grew the huge oak of MMP and the pre-eminence of political parties. We could easily opted for STV or some other proportional system that de-emphasised the influence of political parties but for Palmer’s clever sleight of hand.
So you’d accuse someone who’d take water instead of milk when they’re dying in a desert of not being thirsty? Because that’s pretty much how the Greens felt about the EFA.