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Even though it’s probably a lot of wasted time (they read proposals ahead etc), I think it’s a good idea to ban phones entirely in parliamentary chambers. The o

• buran77 5y ago
  Politicians could be treated like students: below a certain attendance rate or failed pop quiz they "fail the class". Lack of attendance or lack of understanding of the discussion they vote on greatly undermines the already narrow interpretation of democracy we do have. It means that not only are "the people" in no way in power, most don't even have a representative in any reasonable interpretation. They are physically not in the room to contribute to the decision, or don't understand their own choice. A very small minority of representatives gets to decide for a large majority of people they don't representnt.
  • dylan604 5y ago
    "We the people" has been replaced by "We the lobbyists" or extending to "We the corporations".
    • sundvor 5y ago
      Not sure why you're getting down voted, that's how it works in Australia. Just look at how we're still embracing coal, and introducing mileage tax of EVs to repel their takeup. There's a big network of old chummies and political donations from big fossil behind that.
      • brutusborn 5y ago
        What's the mileage tax you mention?
        • sundvor 5y ago
          It's a newly introduced km fee on all road usage for EVs only, not for ICEVs, in Victoria. https://www.caradvice.com.au/955801/victorias-ev-user-tax-is-a-lost-opportunity/#:~:text=In%20case%20you%20haven%27t,hit%20with%202.0c%2Fkm https://www.caradvice.com.au/955801/victorias-ev-user-tax-is.... https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/victoria-passes-ev-tax-effective-july-1-2021 https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-news/victoria-passes-ev-tax-... There's a $3k limited incentive that was used to distract from the fundamental issues behind taxing EV mileage. It doesn't cover long range cars as they're outside the price bracket. The reasoning was that there's no fuel excise being collected, yet the fuel tax isn't being used to cover roads - normal tax payments are. Also it doesn't care that ICEVs currently aren't paying for environmental emissions, when they should. Actually having said all that I should just have pasted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLflYkgnNBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLflYkgnNBY , which explains it all so much better. (Fair warning: Australian language).
          • chris_wot 5y ago
            Same thing is being proposed for NSW. Pathetic really.
            • dylan604 5y ago
              Why is it pathetic? As other commenters have stated, the fuel taxes have supposedly been about offsetting infrastructure costs of the roads and not a pollution control (at least in US). All cars need use of the roads whether EV or ICE powered. Personally, I'd rather they actually charged you by requiring odometer readings instead of a generic tax on utilitly fees. Maybe collect that info on your annual inspection vs the over the air telemetry??
              • ajmadesc 5y ago
                Here is a table of vehicle damage levels by size. https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
      • vanattab 5y ago
        I support mileage taxes on Electric vehicles. The whole idea of the gas tax (at least in the US) was a way approximately tax road usage to fund infrastructure. Why should predominantly well off ev owners get out of paying for road maintenance? If we want to discourage carbon emissions just tax carbon.
        • mullingitover 5y ago
          > Why should predominantly well off ev owners get out of paying for road maintenance? Great point. We should raise gas taxes to subsidize electric vehicles for people with low incomes. If enough people switch to electric to the point that this revenue starts seriously dropping, great: keep turning up the heat with more gasoline taxes until polluting vehicles are completely gone. The "it's not fair" trope about road maintenance for EVs isn't super compelling - the vast majority of road damage is from heavy vehicles like semis. Road damage increases with the cube of mass. Once we've put gasoline vehicles in the history books forever we can work on a mass*acceleration tax.
        • sundvor 5y ago
          In Australia, roads are paid for by our taxes - not the fuel excise. I think I actually support a KM usage tax, but it'd have to be for all kinds of cars - not just the green kind. CO2/PM25 emissions tax should be on top of that. And: To buy an EV in Australia would be considerable stretch on my own budget, and I'd need every single dollar left after it. I'm actually needing a 2nd car now, and am loath to buy another ICEV.
    • BitwiseFool 5y ago
      Sadly, I see this as a natural consequence of how much influence individuals have versus how much influence organizations with money have. I, as a concerned citizen, have nothing compared to a group with a revenue stream orders of magnitude above my own. Even if I were to become a full time activist, the number of people I can reach is tiny compared to an institution with an advertising budget and a consultancy.
      • IngoBlechschmid 5y ago
        I get your point, and it is valid, but also observe that there have been numerous successful social movements in the near and longer past! They had to fight against vastly more powerful systems and still succeeded in the end. As activists, we can obtain substantial press coverage even without an advertising budget, by carrying out well-thought-out direct actions and acts of civil disobedience, and we can offer direct resistance (for instance, when we build tree houses to occupy forests which are on the clearing list of governments or the fossil fuel industry, like we successfully did with the Hambach Forest in Germany).
        • BitwiseFool 5y ago
          I know what you mean. I just feel demoralized and beaten down.
  • clairity 5y ago
    i'd be down for giving tests to legislators of all the bills they're voting on for the day, with questions designed by legislative analysts of all stripes. that way, potential consequences are tested for, not just the contents.
    • trothamel 5y ago
      The vast majority of politics is about things reasonable people disagree on. When you have an elections bills that one side considers to expand access to voting, while the other side considers it to enable voting fraud, how would you write a test?
      • clairity 5y ago
        ah, the dichotomy trap again. we've really got to get past "two sides". what's best for people? for society? if voting is expanded, to who? why? how? what kind of fraud could it enable? how much? how likely? it's not that hard.
  • qwytw 5y ago
    And what's the result of "failing"? A popularly elected representative gets automatically removed from the house because he failed some arbitrary attendance threshold or a test which is going to biased by whomever designed/approved it? I don't think there is an easy way out of this, the "quality" of politicians can only improve if the majority of the people voting for them actually started caring about the actual work they do when elected (instead of basing their decisions entirely on the party they represent, their public image etc.)
    • buran77 5y ago
      A popularly elected representative who does not represent has failed their mandate. The "contract" of democracy is (at least morally) "vote for representation". Without the representation that person is no more entitled to be there than any other random person if you ask me. At the very least in the next election cycle the people will know who represents them and how.
      • qwytw 5y ago
        Tell that to Sinn Fein MPs who were elected to the British parliament in all the elections since 1997 but any of whom is yet to attend a single session. Abstaining from participating in parliament when you're elected or participating in unconstructive ways (i.e. by being disruptive etc.) is a legitimate behaviour. As long as you're transparent about your intentions to behave so to your voters, removing such MPs without an election would be authoritarian. If he/she is not transparent about this and this is/becomes a widespread problem it's preferable to decrease the duration of office terms or allow recall elections instead of instituting arbitrary rules (which will have to be approved by the ruling party/coalition and therefore will likely be designed in such a would which would favour them over opposition parties).
• hirundo 5y ago
  Better than a ban would be to make public whatever the politician is looking at on the phone during a public meeting, in real time. If it is private or secret they can simply not look at it during the meeting. Of course politicians in meetings like these would be the ones to vote on such a proposal, so don't bet on it.
• hiq 5y ago
  > Even though it’s probably a lot of wasted time (they read proposals ahead etc), I think it’s a good idea to ban phones entirely in parliamentary chambers. This is general theme with meetings: once you've allowed people to do something else and reduce the perceived inefficiency at a personal level, you've allowed meetings to become excruciatingly inefficient since nobody complains anymore. The incentives (again, at a personal level) to make the whole process more efficient disappear, so nobody bothers.
• qwytw 5y ago
  Anything like that would just be silly public posturing. Probably in all parliaments almost all of the actual work happens in committees or in other places outside the chamber. An MP who would attend all the public sessions but do nothing else besides that would be completely useless regardless of how attentive or active he is in the discussions. And in any case any question being discussed in the given time might be only relevant to a small subset of the people currently present, what's the point to forcing everyone else to pretend that they are listening...
  • alkonaut 5y ago
    Why would posturing be silly? As you say the main chamber(s) of most parliaments is rather symbolic in nature. But it’s important as such: it represents to the public a lot of what their representatives do. There are usually tons of formal rules for etiquette, dress code etc which are also in a way posturing, or in another way, showing respect for the institution and processes and showing that they take the job seriously. That something is only superficial does in no way mean it’s useless! Showing on opposition speaker the same respect that a 10 year old shows their teacher in school seems like a pretty low bar. The point of forcing everyone to pretend they are listening is the same as the point of forcing everyone to wear a tie: to not make it look like a condo board meeting.
    • qwytw 5y ago
      What if the opposition speaker decides to speak for 10+ hours (assuming the rules/etiquette of the house allow doing so) because he wants to prevent the government from passing some legislation he strongly disagrees with? Should the entire house be forced to sit attentively listen to him reading TV scripts or whatever? Even in less bizarre cases the opposition speaker might purposeful asking irrelevant questions/talking about irrelevant points to appeal to his supporters or otherwise being unconstructive. I'd say most of the formal etiquette and dress code rules are needless distractions which historically were designed either to exclude lower class people from government or as a form of a public ritual which would lend additional weight and gravity to decisions made the parliament (because the majority of the population were not educated enough/didn't have enough time/etc. to take them seriously just based on their content).
• rhacker 5y ago
  Aren't they all elected? I think rather than _control_ what these people do, we just need to have more _reporting_ on what they do.
  • alkonaut 5y ago
    Some things are perhaps rightly too small to see people voted out for, so it’s not an effective means of control. I wouldn’t want my representative to break speaking rules or dress code either but I’m perhaps not ready to choose a different candidate over such a thing.