Can you imagine the shambles our parliament would be in if you had a 1% threshold?..its bad enough with a 5% threshold.

obviously if you consider it “bad” that most voters are represented in proportion to their numbers, you will consider it worse that almost all the voters had that same opportunity to representation according to their numbers. but if you consider that having many MPs outside of the control of the major party whips, is a shambles, experience suggests you are panicking needlessly. only 6 parties have ever been denied a seat due to the threshhold (counting parties which subsequently merged as separate), accounting for a total of 18 seats in 4 parliaments, and many of these either subsequently or previously gained representation (by themselves or in a merged entity) without any obviously disastrous or shambolic effect. we could easily extend to all parties the represention they deserve, without any adverse effects in government (a vague concept anyway – what big bro & stephenr probably really mean by this is “voting not according to my wishes”)
don’t get confused over the issue. the objection is not to parties getting into parliament on the basis of one constituency seat, it is the fact of having a threshold at all.

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that was like a 10 second google search, i just had a hunch there was something – could be more I guess.

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StephenR Says: [above]
…………
Every bit helps doesn’t it

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On the crime thing it doesn’t work because you can’t manhandle (thump) prisoners. In Asian countries they do what they are told (not what they agree too). They march (swinging their arms with gusto) > there is no swagger or “bird” to the TV crews. There is also no prisoner on prisoner violence and sentences are shorter.

Couldn’t we just try it…?

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jh, http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8447.html

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>>dogwhistling to the ugly racist underbelly of New Zealand society
Ah yes in Gore (Southland)!.
The rest of NZ is well and truly used to Asians. The blues want immigration to fill the subdivisions (from one end of the country to the other) the reds are too obsessed with racism (hiding self loathing of our own society perhaps) that they are blind to (and don’t care about) what’s happening on the ground. The Greens have done B/all when it comes to championing the Kiwi lifestyle/the batch etc; the emphasis has been on spy bases, the SAS, foreshore and seabed, Maori sovereignty (thanks to Alliance refugees seeing their ship wasn’t leaving port).
:watermelon:

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I thought Labour wiped their boots on the Greens on the way to the crease. Probably because you rolled onto your backs and said “I’m yours baby, do it to me baby” and wondered why you got ‘done to’.
Now that Labour and Nat are the same it’s vital to keep your allegiances strictly neutral.
By the way shouldn’t proportional representation mean a Labour/National coalition every time, or is that National/Labour?

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>>dogwhistling to the ugly racist underbelly of New Zealand society

I agree, but I disagree that incarceration isn’t the answer to various problems.

There is a cost to society in locking people up, but there is also a cost to letting criminals roam the streets. Which is higher? If the cost to society is higher letting criminals roam the streets, then we should lock them up.

I care not about “rehabilitation”. Provide the opportunity, by all means, but if progress is not made, then it is in jail they stay. For the good of society.

And as for the root cause? Opinions differ, but various studies show unwanted children and poor parenting plays a significant role. Time to rethink the entire welfare state, methinks.

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StephenR said: I don’t think anyone would be arguing *against* increased police numbers though now would we…

Depends what number they are increased to, StephenR. If you get too many cops, they find/do the crimes to justify their jobs, and then we’re on the slippery slope to a Police State. But likelihood of getting caught is one factor that can help to reduce crime, and at the moment competent burglars and thieves probably have little likelihood of getting caught. So a modest increase in police numbers probably is justifiable.

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BB – I didn’t say that I am uncomfortable with Anderton or Dunne being in the House. What I am uncomfortable with is that Judy Turner and Gordon Copeland got to tag in on Dunne’s coat-tails – and that Copeland is still able to stay there despite resigning from UFNZ – (and Heather Roy on Rodney Hide’s coat tails, for that matter) simply because those Parties won an electorate seat.

Personally, I prefer multi-member electorates and Single Transferable Vote, but under MMP I’d like to see all Parties required to hold democratic primaries (as the Green do) to rank their lists, so the public had some way of getting rid of non-performers like Ashraf Chaudhary, Dave Hereora etc.

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I don’t think anyone would be arguing *against* increased police numbers though now would we…

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jh asked: What is it about NZ First you don’t like. Is it their questioning of immigration policy or their stance on crims?

I don’t think their stance on crims works. We’ve seen tougher sentencing progressively introduced and we’ve seen significantly increased police numbers already, but we haven’t seen any corresponding reduction in crime.

But it’s not that position I despise NZF for – I just don’t think it is effective policy to deal with crime. What I despise them for is their dogwhistling to the ugly racist underbelly of New Zealand society.

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http://2005.electionresults.govt.nz/partystatus.html

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Well BB the Greens got TWICE as many votes as UF, and almost as much as NZF, but they don’t deserve to be represented?? Great!

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Andrew it’s not so much that I want those who are acceptable to me to be represented, it’s just that with a tiny bit of support the ability to slow MMP down even MORE is magnified. It’s incidental that I don’t like all the parties that are under 5 percent…

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StephenR Says:
April 14th, 2008 at 9:50 pm

People question immigration policy all the time e.g
………..
Both major parties have a PC position It is Good
“Growth is good”… Gary Moore ex Mayor of Christchurch.

The benefits are postive at the top, hour glass in the middle and go negative at the bottom (my impression). Immigration doesn’t seem to improve GDP per capita but affects many unmeasured aspects of life.

The Greens can’t see immigration issues for “racism” and seem to want to give our changing Anglo Saxon base a putsch?
http://www.davesag.com/unabomber/2leftism.html

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One way to improve the democratic system is to improve the level of debate through better presentation of arguments and reaching to a wider range of people (getting around a party mob) by on line decision making.
Debate graph is a step in the right direction. Lets face it the party decides the official line (house prices caused by ring fencing etc) and that’s it.
https://debategraph.org/

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Frankly, never mind their batting average, it’s the foul shots that have me concerned – the Beazley Report into Rickards mishandled, the Operation 8 fiasco, and now an FTA with China while blatant human rights abuses are carried out daily.

Well, we can only assume she’s running a fascist, terrorist organisation, hell-bent on currying favour with the capitalist globalising powers run by the big MNCs, who respect no nation’s sovereignty, only their consumer base, which Clark seems happy to deliver to constant indebtedness.

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Toad

“For democracy to work, it has to be about not alienating people. Personally, with a Parliament of 120 MPs, I think 1% should be the threshold. But I disagree with the electorate threshold, but which a Party can get 1 MP elected (like Jim Anderton or Peter Dunne) and tag extra seats into Parliament on that basis even though they get less votes than the Party threshold. It should be strictly proportional”

Can you imagine the shambles our parliament would be in if you had a 1% threshold?..its bad enough with a 5% threshold.
You say that you are not comfortable with Anderton or Dunne being in the house and claim that it is not democratic yet your party does not have ONE elected member, in my opinion Anderton (as much as I dislike the man) and Dunne have more right than any Green LIST MP

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good one stephenr – you want only those whose views are acceptable to you to be represented proportionately to their numbers! if it’s proportional there should be no threshhold – not even 1%. otherwise we can’t really call it proportional representation.

the german system seems miserly compared to ours, but in fact their 3-seat threshhold is less of a hurdle in proportional terms.

For much of the public, I’m not so sure it is ‘fairness’ motivating their desire for a wicket so much as lack of momentum.

lack of momentum is a great thing in politics. labour may not have done much to reverse the previous couple of decades, but they’ve performed a service whose magnitude we might soon be about to realize: keeping the other lot out. just slowing down the rate of change is an achievement. if the need to negotiate & compromise within parliament slows it down even more then good.
people hate change, especially rapid change. it’s always going to alienate half the electorate.
it’s absolutely the sense of “giving the others a go” which is influencing the mood of the electorate. i knew a 19 year old girl who was voting for the first time at the last election – not because she deeply valued her chance to participate in the democratic process & make the best decision on behalf of the country – but because her dad was forcing her to. she said she’d vote for national, because “labour have been in for long enough”. i guess to a 19-year-old 6 years is a long time! & that’s half the problem too – with so many new voters who weren’t alive before rogernomics, & so many others who only recently came into the country, there is a huge & increasing bloc of new voters who either don’t understand or don’t care about some of the big national issues.

The unfortunate consequence of MMP. Big parties must occupy the middle ground.

i’m not seeing it. all around the world main parties are becoming clones of each other. during the 2002 french presidential election the 2 main rival candidates came so close to each other that they came to be referred to as josrac & chispin!
i reckon it’s the lack of real choice for voters which forces them to a “lesser of two evils” vote, which in turn prompts the main party candidates to position themselves just a little bit less worse than the other. more & better proportional representation is the appropriate cure.

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