Comments on: Citizens’ Assemblies

By: OutinFront

OutinFront — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:36:16 +0000

StephenR: The people on the Ontario Citizens Assembly in Canada were more than capable of navigating their way through attempts by any advisors to predetermine the outcome. The CA received thousands of written submissions and heard hundreds of oral submissions in something lie 40 cities over most of a year. They represented every strain of opinion and thought on the topic under consideration and the CA members took those views away and debated them and asked questions and tested the evidence robustly.

By: StephenR

StephenR — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:50:33 +0000

Mr D has a point about the picking of the experts…sounds like at one or two would’ve been picked anyway, but still.

By: georgedarroch

georgedarroch — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:53:16 +0000

Citizens assemblies are a brilliant idea. Giving democracy back to the people? Who would be against it, apart from those who are afraid of handing control of an issue back to a public who has time to reason and come to their own conclusions. Introducing them on issues such as electoral reform, where the MPs have a clear conflict of interest is a great place to start. They could then be tested and used more widely, perhaps as an adjunct to the select committee process…

As for s59.

“So police have always had the discretion to charge for assault and assault on children has been illegal since at least 1961.”

In practice the s59 defence meant that a great number of what were clearly assaults were never attended, and further were never investigated, and of those a further number were never prosecuted, and of those a large number were never convicted. It was for this reason that the bill was introduced.

By: OutinFront

OutinFront — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:34:05 +0000

jh: The way I read the original Crimes Act 1961, it is illegal to assault anyone - including children. Section 59 was only ever a defence a charge of assault laid by the police. So police have always had the discretion to charge for assault and assault on children has been illegal since at least 1961.

Your comment merely demonstrates how much ignorance there is about both the old law and the new.

By: Valis

Valis — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:43:58 +0000

The real problem here is that the Nats are no less biased than Labour. If they really wanted to show leadership, they’d do the bi-partisan thing themselves, pick a “balanced” panel and commit to the citizen’s forum process. Instead they have promised only to cancel the whole thing, repeal the EFA and take us back to the previous unworkable situation.

By: Mr Dennis

Mr Dennis — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:32:53 +0000

“Conservative parties don’t like these assemblies as their gut preference is for dictating any solution.”
Rubbish. Please back that up or withdraw it.

I have no real problem with a citizens assembly, it is a democratic way of working out the electoral system independently of MPs, who have a vested interest. The objection people have to this particular assembly set up by Labour is that the experts in charge of it have been picked by Labour, and some people feel they are biased towards state funding of political parties and other measures that although Labour and the Greens may support, the rest of us do not. The problem is not that it is a citizens assembly, but that the advice they are given and therefore the conclusion they come to may be biased in favour of the left-wing view. Had those in charge of it been selected by a cross-party consensus, rather than hand-picked by Labour, this objection would disappear.

By: jh

jh — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:02:57 +0000

The law as it is makes mild smacking illegal leaving discretion for punishment at the hands of the police.

By: jh

jh — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:53:09 +0000

You wish.

By: pingpong

pingpong — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:17:05 +0000

Exactly, jh. If the section 59 legislation had been discussed and debated rationally, with full access to both expert and lay opinion, I’m betting the law as passed would not be very different from what it is, and would have 90 percent acceptance from the start.

By: jh

jh — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:39:24 +0000

It is one of few processes where the shared values of the public are directly applied to policy recommendations, rather than guessed or assumed by privileged individuals—sometimes with their own agenda.
…………………………
Section 59 anyone?