The Electoral Commission considered all submissions on the 2012 review of the MMP voting system and has developed a set of proposals for change.
These have today been released as a Proposals Paper, and the public is again invited to make comment on the proposals being suggested.
The one electorate seat threshold for the allocation of list seats should be abolished.
The party vote threshold for the allocation of list seats should be lowered to 4%.
Candidates should continue to be able to stand both in an electorate and on a party list at general elections.
List MPs should continue to be able to contest by-elections.
Political parties should continue to have responsibility for the composition and ranking of candidates on their party lists.
The provision for overhang seats should be abolished for parties that do not cross the party vote threshold.
On the basis of current information, it would be prudent to identify 76 electorate seats (in a 120 seat Parliament) as the point at which the risk to proportionality from insufficient list seats becomes unacceptable. New Zealand is unlikely to reach that point before 2026.
The gradual erosion of lists seats relative to electorate seats risks undermining the diversity of representation in Parliament. Parliament should review this matter.
I abandoned my first attempt at blogging because I ended up posting only about once a month. In other words, I failed. This time I think I’ve succeeded. Ideally, bloggers should blog on an at least daily basis. Mostly, I’ve been doing that. And there’s Tim’s and Reed’s posts as well for our more discerning readers.
I judge Eternal Vigilance to be a success! (Judge’s decision is final. No correspondence will be entered into.)
But I’ve run into a problem. I’m spending increasing amounts of time blogging. Here, there and everywhere. And then there’s the insidious, creeping evil that goes by the name of Facebook … I’m hitting that “Like” button like a pigeon in a psychology lab. I’m being sucked into an online vortex, death spiralling to self-destruction.
Oh, no, I’m not!
I’ve resolved to have a week off to assess my situation. No posting, no commenting and I won’t be reading your posts, either.
[The Son of God] works on us in all sorts of ways … through books, sometimes through experiences which seem (at the time) anti-Christian. When a young man who has been going to church in a routine way honestly realises that he does not believe in Christianity and stops going—provided he does it for honesty’s sake and not just to annoy his parents—the spirit of Christ is probably nearer to him then than it ever was before.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.
Why is there no entry Parasites in the Ayn Rand Lexicon?! Nor Looters, nor Moochers??! (I almost clicked Entitlement, Age of but then realised I’d misread it.)
It ain’t right. ‘Parasite’ was one of Rand’s favourite words. A search for ‘parasites’ delivered the goods, though. Here are some excerpts from The Ayn Rand Letter, filed under Welfare State.
Morally and economically, the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull. Morally, the chance to satisfy demands by force spreads the demands wider and wider, with less and less pretense at justification. Economically, the forced demands of one group create hardships for all others, thus producing an inextricable mixture of actual victims and plain parasites. Since need, not achievement, is held as the criterion of rewards, the government necessarily keeps sacrificing the more productive groups to the less productive, gradually chaining the top level of the economy, then the next level, then the next. (How else are unachieved rewards to be provided?)
There are two kinds of need involved in this process: the need of the group making demands, which is openly proclaimed and serves as cover for another need, which is never mentioned—the need of the power-seekers, who require a group of dependent favor-recipients in order to rise to power. Altruism feeds the first need, statism feeds the second, Pragmatism blinds everyone—including victims and profiteers—not merely to the deadly nature of the process, but even to the fact that a process is going on.
[A] real turning point came when the welfare statists switched from economics to physiology: they began to seek a new power base in deliberately fostered racism, the racism of minority groups, then in the hatreds and inferiority complexes of women, of “the young,” etc. The significant aspect of this switch was the severing of economic rewards from productive work. Physiology replaced the conditions of employment as the basis of social claims. The demands were no longer for “just compensation,” but just for compensation, with no work required.
So long as the power-seekers clung to the basic premises of the welfare state, holding need as the criterion of rewards, logic forced them, step by step, to champion the interests of the less and less productive groups, until they reached the ultimate dead end of turning from the role of champions of “honest toil” to the role of champions of open parasitism, parasitism on principle, parasitism as a “right” (with their famous slogan turning into: “Who does not toil, shall eat those who do”).
Well, what’s there to say, except that Rand was right on the money? This stuff is razor sharp, and remarkably prescient, given that she wrote it in the early 1970s. And chilling. But I wonder if even Rand would have envisaged a President of the United States who, on the campaign trail just four decades later, would say to his audience
If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
The obvious implication being that if you didn’t build it, it’s not yours, and the government is entitled to take it and “redistribute” it to “somebody else”. The entitlement mentality is endemic and infects the highest levels of government in a country that was once a shining beacon of capitalism.
Death metal is the soundtrack to the End of the Age.
Here’s Brain Drill with The Parasites from their debut album Apocalyptic Feasting.
Today is Hiroshima Day. I remember this because it was also my grandmother’s birthday. I remember the anniversary of her death, too. She died the day I got married.
My grandmother died a widow. And my grandfather effectively died a widower, because my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for the last decade of her life.
But enough of the autobiography.
The New Testament gives a quite detailed picture of what a Christian social welfare system would look like. There would be NO government involvement.
I’m no expert on social welfare, but I believe that the economic millstone that is today’s welfare state began in New Zealand with an old age pension introduced in 1898. A widow’s pension (today’s Widow’s Benefit) was introduced in 1911. As one of the country’s earliest social welfare benefits, it would probably be one of the last to go, were New Zealand ever to prosper under a Christian libertarian government.
Here is what the Apostle Paul has to say about the care of widows in the First Epistle to Timothy.
Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For some have already strayed after Satan. If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows. (ESV)
Widows are to be cared for by their children or grandchildren, by their second (or subsequent) husbands, by their wider family or, as a last resort, by the church. Sounds like solid, compassionate common sense to me.
In today’s world, of course, is there any general reason why widows who aren’t truly decrepit can’t get jobs and support themselves? I can’t think of one.
An adoption order may be made on the application of 2 spouses jointly in respect of a child.
Supposedly, we must “legalise” gay marriage so that gay couples can adopt children. So where’s the bit that says the two spouses cannot be of the same sex? Why is Louisa Wall’s Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill seeking to amend the Marriage Act and not the Adoption Act?
Someone please explain to me what all the fuss is about. Because I’m baffled. Baffled by bullshit?
