The flag doodle John Key did on Breakfast sold for $10,150 on TradeMe.
The money will go to Cure Kids and the winning bidder will also get morning tea with the Prime Minister.
And what does a $10,000 doodle look like?
This:
The flag doodle John Key did on Breakfast sold for $10,150 on TradeMe.
The money will go to Cure Kids and the winning bidder will also get morning tea with the Prime Minister.
And what does a $10,000 doodle look like?
This:
Justice Minister Simon Power has announced the government’s reform package for electoral finance law.
He said:
“The package comes after extended consultation with all parliamentary parties and the public.
“As a result, Cabinet has decided to progress reforms only where there is broad public and political support.
“If we are to have a system which is fair, workable, enduring, and in place before the 2011 election, broad consensus is essential.”
Proposal in the package include:
- Require disclosure of the total amount of donations that parties receive in bands.
- Increase the amount of money that parties and candidates can spend on election campaigning at the rate of inflation for each general election.
- Require people who spend more than $12,000 on parallel campaigning to register with the Electoral Commission. The register will be publicly available to ensure openness and transparency concerning the identities of parallel campaigners.
- Bring more certainty to what counts as ‘election advertising’ by modernising the definition and requiring the Electoral Commission to issue guidance and advisory opinions about election advertisements.
- Clarify the relationship between the Electoral Act 1993 and Parliamentary Service legislation.
- Maintain the regulated campaign period to be three months before polling day.
The acknowledgement that broad consensus is necessary is a very good start. One of the many problems with the mess Labour made of electoral finance changes was bulldozing them through without wide support.
Increasing the amount which parties and candidates can spend with inflation is sensible.
So is bringing more certainty to what counts as election advertising and requiring the Electoral Commission to issue guidance and advisory opinions. Confusion about what was permitted and what wasn’t and fear of getting it wrong restrained free expression before the last election.
Returning the regulated period to three months before polling day rather than from January 1 of an election year is also a good move. Although I’d add, or from the announcement of the election if that is less than three months from polling day.
Related to that is clarifying the relationship between the Electoral Act and parliamentary Service legislation – we must not have a repeat of the pledge card and other rorts where parties and MPs campaigned with public money.
More information ont he review is available at the Justice Ministry.
UPDATE: Kiwiblog says consensus is the right way to approach the issue reform but it kills most meaningful electoral finance reform.
The pro MMP poster at No Right Turn says I’d rather live in a democracy with 120 MPs than a dictatorship with 99.
I’ll ignore the debate on whether MMP really is any more democratic than other electoral systems and stick with the numbers.
If we still had FPP we wouldn’t yet have 120 MPs but we’d have more than 99 unless the formula for setting electoral boundaries had changed.
The number of electorate seats keeps increasing under MMP and they would have under FPP too.
The number of South Island seats was fixed under FPP and still is with MMP. Under both systems the South Island population is divided by that fixed number of seats and that figure is used to determine how many people will be in each electorate in both islands, plus or minus 5%.
The North Island population grows faster than that of the South so every six years when electorate boundaries are calculated we get another seat or two.
Had we still had FPP we’d be approaching 110 MPs.
This formula is why MMP will eventually stop working as it’s intended to. Each time an electorate seat is added a list seat is subtracted. We started with 65 electorate seats (60 general and 5 Maori) and 55 list seats in 1996. Now there are 70 electorate and 52 list seats (an overhang of two).
Unless there’s an increase in the total number of seats in parliament we’ll get to a stage where the number of list seats is so small proportionality will be lost.
The alternative is to reduce the number of South Island electorates but the big rural electorates in both islands already cover far too big an area.
Whatever the referendum result, there will have to be changes eventually and the price of maintaining proportionality might be more MPs – electorate and list.