Wednesday, November 08, 2006



100 MP bill fails

A good day for democracy: the Democrats have taken the House in the US, and the Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill just failed 112 - 9. Parliament will begin debating the drinking age bill at 7:30, and probably vote around 9:30. Meanwhile, I'll try and get tally sheets ASAP after the vote is taken.

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 11/08/2006 06:03:00 PM

3 comments:

In light of this maybe we should repeal the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993.

1) If the aim is to find out what the people think - it is just stupid to do a 100% sample. Polling will give you effectively the same answer for a vastly lower cost.

2) if the aim is to get the law passed (which might require a formal vote count) - clearly it doesn't work.

So why tolerate them?

 Posted by Genius : 11/08/2006 08:54:00 PM

I'm not sure you are making a valid comparison, Genius.

Polling is intended to find out what people think. The pupose of a referendum is to find out what people want.

 Posted by Anonymous : 11/08/2006 09:27:00 PM

I think it should go. Referenda should be for fundamental constitutional provisions, not for talkback bandwagons.

The reason representative government works is that the people don't know how to govern the country, but they can tell when it isn't working. The US elections are a good example - in '04 they stupidly voted for a package that included continuing neocolonialism - now, they've been belatedly forced to agree it doesn't work and voted for a change.

 Posted by Rich : 11/10/2006 12:45:00 PM

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