This morning's Herald reports that the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill lacks support, and quotes Peter Dunne as saying that he is
unlikely to support it going any further unless it was limited to list MPs only.
We can but hope. The worry is that Labour will agree to those amendments, as it apparently is concerned about defections in response to its plan to purge the dead wood. Which suggests that those who look likely to be victims of th ebill should rebel now, while they have the chance, rather than meekly submit to party tyranny. After all, what are Labour going to do to anyone who violates the party rules by voting against the caucus on this? Kick them out and risk losing their vote on confidence and supply?
No, Peter, you'd still be supporting bad, anti-democratic law. After all, it's easier for the electorate to get rid of a "waka-jumping" list MP as opposed to a constituency MP who has a well-oiled electorate organisation and a respectable local personal vote. (Not looking at Ohariu-Belmont... not at all...)
ReplyDeleteArguably, it's more 'anti-democratic' that parties like UF, and Jim Anderton's Personality Cult can fail to reach the 5% threshold, but coat-tail members on their leader's electorate win.
Craig: what's "anti-democratic" is that we have a 5% threshold, which both ensures that some people's voices are not heard, and positively encourages parties to conspire to disenfranchise voters by driving their parties below it. The only morally supportable threshold is 0.8% - that required to gain a single MP.
ReplyDeleteAnd really, if you want every politician to be in fear for their job (and they bloody well should be), we have to eliminate not only safe list placements, but safe seats. The way to do this is to move to full PR, with an open list, ordered by the voters rather than the party heirarchy. But the chances of parties voting for that are about the same as the chances of their voting to cut their own salaries...