I’m wanting to see more well-rounded policy that can be supported by the major parties regardless of ‘who floated it’, hoping for better enduring government rather than this ‘rip and replace’ bullshit.
Obviously with the right wong think tanks invading, this is nothing more than a thought exercise, but i reckon its worth exploring.
My heretical angle is significantly reducing thenterms that parties have in power - not extending to 4 years but instead reducing to 1 or 18 months. The thinking being: If you cant get anything done because the only work one is interested in doing is ideological nonsense that caters to a narrow part of society maybe it shouldn’t get off the ground in the first place?
The party with the highest number of votes proposes laws, they have to pass both houses to become law, every vote is a conscious vote. We could put thresholds too if we want so that a simple majority isn’t enough.
The economy is already broken into sectors such as agriculture, technology, tourism etc. We could simply formalise these sectors and the N unions with the highest membership in each sector selects an advisor for the panel. The idea each sector can be broken down even further. For example if technology is a sector they can break it down into hardware and software or whatever.
Any law that is proposed would be submitted to the advisory panel where the experts would write a report listing the possible benefits and the harms of the law. They don’t get a vote.
This seems like one big parliament with extra steps. Is the benefit of this process that you are specifically getting MPs that represent specific areas to agree to pass it, separately to people whose party was voted in but personally they don’t answer to anyone? I guess while I can see some benefit of the two stages I’m not sure I get why it’s worth the effort. Is the benefit more in that you select them in a different way and on a separate cycle?
I don’t get how that works in practice. Wouldn’t there be an expectation that MPs vote with their party, even if you claim it’s a conscience vote? Is there some law now that says MPs have to vote the way their party says?
I’m assuming the membership can choose whether or not to participate? E.g. the milking industry will want to participate in an advisory panel on water quality in rivers, but they may not care about laws relating to offshore oil drilling. How do you prevent this advisory panel from advising water quality isn’t an issue because the one tourism advisor representing the kayaker tour operators gets outnumbered by the dairy, agriculture, and power company representatives?
I guess I wasn’t clear. The elected MP are not partisan. They don’t run on party. They are local people in their area who run for parliament to represent their local interests. The “party house” is based on party vote and thus represents the country as a whole. Whichever party has the most votes gets to propose laws but all votes in both houses are based on conscious votes. Of course parties may and will whip their members but there is no coalition to ram things through.
Yes the purpose is to make things more deliberate and also make sure every law is able to pass the approval of local and national interests and of course is duly whetted by experts in the field.
You mean like a union choosing not to send a representative? Yes if they don’t want any say then they don’t have to. We could set a number for that panel though and just allow the next union to send a rep.
Yes of course but I think you’ll find most legislature will have side effects that impact the entire commercial sector.
You can’t. If there is disagreement then it’s in the report. The purpose of the report isn’t to pass a go or no judgement, it’s to outline all the impacts on the lives of working people. Every policy will help some people and hurt others. It’s good to know that going in.
Thanks for all the clarifications. I would support giving this a go! I think NZ would be a great test bed for major reforms in western democracies, if only we could convince people to give it a go.
Obviously we are never going to give it a go. We are stuck in our ways and follow what we have been given to us by England.
I would love it if the country somehow agreed to a reset. Let’s declare ourselves a republic, let’s write a constitution, let’s set up new and better institutions that will protect human rights and democracy no matter who is in office.
Pipe dreams though. This country is way too conservative to think outside the box. Hell we can’t even legalise dope FFS.