Geez are you people so dim you need this spelling out for you….

?

The Governor General is supposed to be the Queen’s representative, and no legislation can be passed without their consent (on behalf of the Queen). In theory, this means that if the Queen disagrees with any legislation (I bet she would have had some issue with the EFA, assuming it had actually been put in front of her), she can refuse to allow the GG to sign it, or say it will not be signed until there is a public referendum supporting it.

The problem is not that we have the Queen as our head of state, I am sure she would be a perfectly good one, IF she was ever actually consulted.

The problem is that we have a GG who is appointed by the government and is a puppet who signs any bit of paper put in front of them without actually asking for the Queen’s opinion.

With our current system, the GG is the Queen’s representative. Therefore, in theory, they cannot sign anything the Queen disagrees with. Maybe we should stop arguing about who to have as head of state, and actually petition the Queen about dodgy legislation? She can then instruct the GG not to pass it.

I personally haven’t written to the Queen on the EFA or anything else. I doubt anyone has. We probably should use the current system we have to the maximum length we can, before arguing that we need a new system. Maybe if we actually talked to the current head of state the current system would work?

If petitioning the Queen fails, and only then, we could be justified in seeking a new system.

[DPF: Heh heh]

What relevance does the Queen have? Little.
What relevance does our flag have? Little.
What relevance does our system of government have? Little.

81% voter turnout last time. Thats almost 2 people out of every 10 that didn’t vote.

And even worse, thats 8 out of 10 people that did vote!!!

Obviously we need a big change.

REVOLUTION 08!

Screw getting a new government, lets make a new country!

http://republicans.org.nz/2008/01/

Maybe we a written constitution, but …..

We have growing violence in society, the world is starting to boil, and they want a bloody republic – as though that will solve anything.

about anything..?

(yawn..!..)

phil(whoar.co.nz)

If I cannot get that, then I’d want a constitution limiting the power of government [however it is composed], rather than a series of ad hoc conventions.

If the republican movement was confident it could get public support for a change to a republic, where is the Citizen’s Initiated Referendum? Republicanism is a significant minority in NZ, but still a minority.

Ben Wilson: Who says it has to be a political party that establishes a Constitutional Convention?

I give up. Who?

Letting Mike Moore try to make the news is another reason to stop reading the Herald. But I did like the irony of Moore saying “The present direction is visionless, dangerously ad hoc, short-term, and confusing.”. Reminds me of when he was PM. If only he’d had all his brilliant ideas then, maybe he could have done something about them, instead of rolling the guy who actually gave us a Bill of Rights, just to get ‘Former PM of NZ’ onto his CV.

I don’t think we can blame our electoral system for the fact that a large number of our fellow citizens elect parties like NZF to parliament. Those fellow citizens seem to actually agree what Winston has to offer – no idea why, but hard to deny their democratic right to be heard.

The main problems with the former house Legislative Council were

1. That membership of the Legislative Council was by appointment rather than election.

2. Its members were first appointed for life which meant a new govt faced a hostile upper house stacked with anti-govt members. This was changed to 7 year membership in 1891, but still left this problem.

3. The Legislative Council was generally less representative of the New Zealand public than was the House of Representatives. Women were barred from membership of the house until 1941, although its always had Maori representation since 1872, by convention.

4. In its final years the Council rarely bothered to criticize bills sent to it by the House and as I said was full of elderly old knee knockers and many people barely knew it still existed. Hardly anyone turned up to watch itself vote itself out of existence.

Jim Boldger in 1990 threw round the idea of creating an elected Senate as an alternative to electoral reform but it went no where.

NZ really doesn’t need a new elected or appointed costly upper house which would simply repeat the party politics battles in the House of Representatives. The larger size of parliament, MMP, NZ’s small size, unitary as opposed to Federal system and select committee system all mean we don’t need an upper house…but this isn’t enough considering Labours actions like attempted forced public access and the EFA so we do need some protection via a constitution. Cheaper than an Upper house too.

BZZTT!

Wrong. The first National govt dissolved it in the early 1950s. Set up a Royal Commission to recommend a replacement and the commission came back and recommended another upper house – from memory an elected senate.

PM Sid Holland was asked what he would do with the Royal Commission’s recommendations and he said he was going to take them to his holiday bach and hang them on a hook in the outhouse…

How many of them have a stable government? They all have Presidents and constitutions, but it hasn’t done them much good.”

This is a common argument, but it seems unlikely for these factors to be correlated. Rather it seems that instability in these countries would occur in spite of their status as a result of other underlying problems in them. New Zealand, despite the paranoia of some overly partisan posters, remains a stable first world democracy. Becoming a republic, barring an exceptionally unlikely (given it would need to be popularly elected) enormous degree of power bestowed upon the Presidency, this is unlikely to change.

Nonetheless as a republic would not result in any significant change, it is unlikely to gain support among a majority of the public because with only minor improvements the status quo will typically be preferable. Upon the Queen’s death I believe republicanism will be easier to sell, given that a number of softer monarchists are that way as a result of affinity to the respected long reigning monarch we currently have.

Finally, it is likely that so long as a New Zealand Republic did not have any early mishaps, support for reverting back to the monarchy would drop to near zero levels within a few years (“independence movements” such as becoming a Republic are much more common than the other way around). Whereas for as long as New Zealand remains a constitutional monarchy, there is likely to be significant support for a Republic.

The last upper house we had was gotten rid of by a Labour govt. In fact the Upper house dissolved itself. It had become a dumping ground for elderly party hacks drawing a salary and expense accounts from the taxpayer while actually doing nothing very much.

So a Labour party got rid of them then took their place…. OK we have a pseudo upper house, we need a real govt.

Article 1. The Labour Party of New Zealand is the only legally constituted party of Government.

Article 2. The leader of the Labour Party will be the President of whatever name he or she decides to call the country.

Article 3. The President and the Ruling Council will be the only authority entitled to set or amended any laws and shall do so from time to time as they decide.

Article 4. Any citizen who shows dissent to any of these Articles will be shot along woth their families and anyone associated with them.

It seems the holiday season with it’s lack of news is a good time to raise the issue again.