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Ask the Kiwis? I admit that I'm a kiwi and so I don't have a clear perspective, but I've never considered our Parliament to be be particularly unstable. Certain

Ask the Kiwis? I admit that I'm a kiwi and so I don't have a clear perspective, but I've never considered our Parliament to be be particularly unstable. Certainly there's a bit of horse-trading around election time, but not much. The advantage is that parties like the Greens have a much fairer slice of the influence.

twelvechairs 14y ago
I agree. MMP as in Germany and NZ looks pretty good to me (I'm in Australia, with preferential winner-takes-all as the grandparent post would seem to advocate as better). I have never seen any evidence for the 'impossible to govern' line, which seems to be pulled out by big parties with a big desire to retain the status quo (In the UK they even pulled out this argument to much effect against preferential/alternative/instant-runoff voting, which seems crazy from Australia)... I'd agree that compulsory voting is good though. In Australia we also tend to vote on the weekend, which I think is also important and probably overlooked.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  I like the Australian approach. We almost always form a government quickly with the Senate acting as a reasonable check on legislative adventurism. The poms have it better with the House of Lords, but I don't think a similar institution can be engineered ab initio, it's an evolved body. The Canadians tried, I understand they don't regard it highly. I'd fiddle with the Senate formula to allow more minority parties into the mix (for the past few decades it's settled into a stable tripartite pattern, 2 majors and a minor).
  - noarchy 14y ago
    Speaking as a Canadian, the Senate is little more than a retirement program for friends of the party (which party is of little consequence). The party that currently holds power spent years talking about Senate reform, only to revert to the status quo once they got into power. Thus, the Senate rubber-stamps legislation, but no one seriously discusses what goes on in that body, because I think that it is generally understood that it doesn't make a difference.
- vacri 14y ago
  The current Australian government is a minority government, and they're getting a lot of legislation passed, though you'd never think so if you read the papers. 'minority government' is simply not synonymous with 'paralysed government'. Also, given that Germany is the main engine-room that's keeping Europe financially afloat, it's clear that it's working there as well.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    I don't see that the Prime Minister has to spend time constantly making cooing noises to a pack of grand-standing, pork-barrelling independents as a feature. It is absolutely possible to govern from a minority party. But it's rare, and such governments tend not to be considered very good. In the pathological case, negotiations can leave you without a government for years. In jurisdictions where the executive is separate, that's not really a problem. In fused jurisdictions, it is.
    - vacri 14y ago
      What are you on about? That's part of politics, whether the grandstanders are in your own party or not. But you've highlighted an excellent point - you're making it sound like parliament is ineffective, when they've passed more bills in 2012 than any other year in the last decade. In 2012 they passed 207 bills. In 2011 it was 188, and for the rest of the prior decade it hovered between 140ish and 180ish. Despite being a minority government, they are passing a lot of legislation - more than ever before. Hardly paralysed by 'endless negotiation'. http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Statistics/statsnet/legislation/passed/2012 http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Statistics/stat...
      - jacques_chester 14y ago
        In all sincerity, "number of Acts passed" is a terrible metric. Like measuring the success of a new plane design by how many tons are being added per year. 2011 and 2012 are outliers for a simple reason: the Carbon tax was being first passed into law and then frequently amended. The Australian Constitution requires that legislation dealing with appropriations / taxation only deal with that subject. Historical judgements by the High Court mean that every new tax is broken down into lots of little interlocking Acts with very narrow purposes, to prevent a whole scheme being knocked out in a High Court ruling. You'll find a bump in 1999 Acts because of the GST, for example.
cturner 14y ago
I would have suggested Israel or Tasmania as a better example of the stability problem than New Zealand. New Zealand is vulnerable to it though: MMP makes it harder to form majorities, and encourages the election of "hacks" - abrasive party people who the system motivates to carve out a brand rather than inclusive electorate-centric members. This pattern also plays out in Gerrymandered electorate systems like California. > The advantage is that parties like the Greens have a > much fairer slice of the influence. I understand your point, but disagree with a premise. The way you've stated that thinks in terms of party brand, rather than representatives. The Westminster system is fundamentally about responsible representatives for the purpose of governing. Members with electorates have an incentive to be mild and inclusive, to keep their electorate happy. Whereas parties have incentive to be abrasive to carve out brand. Electorate systems that favour parties have a jobs-for-the-boys culture. Look at the US or Australian senate vs the lower houses. Or the UK upper house which is one of the most effective in the world for the purpose of performing quality review despite being not elected. It's also the only upper house I can think of that's not packed with teachers, lawyers and party hacks. If anything, what we should be seeking is to reduce the reach of parties. For example, the Hare-Clarke system used in Tasmania doesn't have party names on the ballot papers and you're not allowed to hand out how-to-votes outside polling booths. (Tasmania multi-member electorates have a counter-effect to this though, and encourage party strength) The continual pursuit of democracy for its own sake is not necessarily a positive force. Before the 1948 Australian senate reforms, the Australian senate was elected with each state being an electorate. This meant a high turnover of senators, giving more people a shorter role in public life, and it clearly defined them as reviewers. The role of the senate is murkier now: it entrenches the role of party in political life (through election and balance of power contests), senators have long political lives and it has become a place that otherwise unelectable powerbrokers go to sort out their superannuation (e.g. Graham Richardson, Noel Crichton-Browne).
- chad_oliver 14y ago
  > The Westminster system is fundamentally about responsible representatives for the purpose of governing. Members with electorates have an incentive to be mild and inclusive, to keep their electorate happy. Whereas parties have incentive to be abrasive to carve out brand. Electorate systems that favour parties have a jobs-for-the-boys culture. That's a very good point. I wonder if it's possible to have a party-based system which does not encourage extreme brands?
jacques_chester 14y ago
Actually, New Zealand is a bad example. You've got an odd hybrid of winner-takes-all and PR. In Australia we do it by having a bicameral Parliament. The Reps is winner-takes-all and the Senate is PR per-state.
archangel_one 14y ago
There were certainly some issues early on (the thing with list MPs leaving their party but keeping their seat, for example) but I think those have been ironed out now? I feel like maybe there is too much power given to kingmakers, like the anti-smacking bill for example - the vast majority of the population didn't want it, neither National nor Labour really wanted it, but it got rammed through by the Greens because Labour needed their support to govern. But overall, I think it's still better than the arrangement here (the UK) where the Lib Dems got piles of popular support at the last election but retained relatively little power from it.

twelvechairs 14y ago

I agree. MMP as in Germany and NZ looks pretty good to me (I'm in Australia, with preferential winner-takes-all as the grandparent post would seem to advocate as better). I have never seen any evidence for the 'impossible to govern' line, which seems to be pulled out by big parties with a big desire to retain the status quo (In the UK they even pulled out this argument to much effect against preferential/alternative/instant-runoff voting, which seems crazy from Australia)... I'd agree that compulsory voting is good though. In Australia we also tend to vote on the weekend, which I think is also important and probably overlooked.

jacques_chester 14y ago
I like the Australian approach. We almost always form a government quickly with the Senate acting as a reasonable check on legislative adventurism. The poms have it better with the House of Lords, but I don't think a similar institution can be engineered ab initio, it's an evolved body. The Canadians tried, I understand they don't regard it highly. I'd fiddle with the Senate formula to allow more minority parties into the mix (for the past few decades it's settled into a stable tripartite pattern, 2 majors and a minor).
- noarchy 14y ago
  Speaking as a Canadian, the Senate is little more than a retirement program for friends of the party (which party is of little consequence). The party that currently holds power spent years talking about Senate reform, only to revert to the status quo once they got into power. Thus, the Senate rubber-stamps legislation, but no one seriously discusses what goes on in that body, because I think that it is generally understood that it doesn't make a difference.
vacri 14y ago
The current Australian government is a minority government, and they're getting a lot of legislation passed, though you'd never think so if you read the papers. 'minority government' is simply not synonymous with 'paralysed government'. Also, given that Germany is the main engine-room that's keeping Europe financially afloat, it's clear that it's working there as well.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  I don't see that the Prime Minister has to spend time constantly making cooing noises to a pack of grand-standing, pork-barrelling independents as a feature. It is absolutely possible to govern from a minority party. But it's rare, and such governments tend not to be considered very good. In the pathological case, negotiations can leave you without a government for years. In jurisdictions where the executive is separate, that's not really a problem. In fused jurisdictions, it is.
  - vacri 14y ago
    What are you on about? That's part of politics, whether the grandstanders are in your own party or not. But you've highlighted an excellent point - you're making it sound like parliament is ineffective, when they've passed more bills in 2012 than any other year in the last decade. In 2012 they passed 207 bills. In 2011 it was 188, and for the rest of the prior decade it hovered between 140ish and 180ish. Despite being a minority government, they are passing a lot of legislation - more than ever before. Hardly paralysed by 'endless negotiation'. http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Statistics/statsnet/legislation/passed/2012 http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Statistics/stat...
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      In all sincerity, "number of Acts passed" is a terrible metric. Like measuring the success of a new plane design by how many tons are being added per year. 2011 and 2012 are outliers for a simple reason: the Carbon tax was being first passed into law and then frequently amended. The Australian Constitution requires that legislation dealing with appropriations / taxation only deal with that subject. Historical judgements by the High Court mean that every new tax is broken down into lots of little interlocking Acts with very narrow purposes, to prevent a whole scheme being knocked out in a High Court ruling. You'll find a bump in 1999 Acts because of the GST, for example.

cturner 14y ago

I would have suggested Israel or Tasmania as a better example of the stability problem than New Zealand. New Zealand is vulnerable to it though: MMP makes it harder to form majorities, and encourages the election of "hacks" - abrasive party people who the system motivates to carve out a brand rather than inclusive electorate-centric members. This pattern also plays out in Gerrymandered electorate systems like California. > The advantage is that parties like the Greens have a > much fairer slice of the influence. I understand your point, but disagree with a premise. The way you've stated that thinks in terms of party brand, rather than representatives. The Westminster system is fundamentally about responsible representatives for the purpose of governing. Members with electorates have an incentive to be mild and inclusive, to keep their electorate happy. Whereas parties have incentive to be abrasive to carve out brand. Electorate systems that favour parties have a jobs-for-the-boys culture. Look at the US or Australian senate vs the lower houses. Or the UK upper house which is one of the most effective in the world for the purpose of performing quality review despite being not elected. It's also the only upper house I can think of that's not packed with teachers, lawyers and party hacks. If anything, what we should be seeking is to reduce the reach of parties. For example, the Hare-Clarke system used in Tasmania doesn't have party names on the ballot papers and you're not allowed to hand out how-to-votes outside polling booths. (Tasmania multi-member electorates have a counter-effect to this though, and encourage party strength) The continual pursuit of democracy for its own sake is not necessarily a positive force. Before the 1948 Australian senate reforms, the Australian senate was elected with each state being an electorate. This meant a high turnover of senators, giving more people a shorter role in public life, and it clearly defined them as reviewers. The role of the senate is murkier now: it entrenches the role of party in political life (through election and balance of power contests), senators have long political lives and it has become a place that otherwise unelectable powerbrokers go to sort out their superannuation (e.g. Graham Richardson, Noel Crichton-Browne).

chad_oliver 14y ago
> The Westminster system is fundamentally about responsible representatives for the purpose of governing. Members with electorates have an incentive to be mild and inclusive, to keep their electorate happy. Whereas parties have incentive to be abrasive to carve out brand. Electorate systems that favour parties have a jobs-for-the-boys culture. That's a very good point. I wonder if it's possible to have a party-based system which does not encourage extreme brands?

jacques_chester 14y ago

Actually, New Zealand is a bad example. You've got an odd hybrid of winner-takes-all and PR. In Australia we do it by having a bicameral Parliament. The Reps is winner-takes-all and the Senate is PR per-state.

archangel_one 14y ago

There were certainly some issues early on (the thing with list MPs leaving their party but keeping their seat, for example) but I think those have been ironed out now? I feel like maybe there is too much power given to kingmakers, like the anti-smacking bill for example - the vast majority of the population didn't want it, neither National nor Labour really wanted it, but it got rammed through by the Greens because Labour needed their support to govern. But overall, I think it's still better than the arrangement here (the UK) where the Lib Dems got piles of popular support at the last election but retained relatively little power from it.