Life, love and politics through the eyes of an Aucklander in Wellington.
I think Turia had to abide by the party integrity bill.
Right - of course, the legislation didn't expire until 2005.
I disagree. MPs are all elected to the House, through differing means, but ultimately there should apply only one standard of MP.
If you have the waka-jumping bill, then at least follow the German model (although for resignations) in which the party appoints a new electorate MP - there is no by-election. That would at least give list and electorate MPs a level field.
However, do we really want to see a situation like with Donna Awatere Huata, in which the party kicked out an MP and then forced her out of Parliament? The ability to remove dissent for caucus by the leaders is a dangerous move, which would result in parties simply being all of one mind, with little policy discussion. It would increase the power of the leader above caucus members.
A Member of Parliament has the right to decide how they will vote, and if they find that the party they belong to no longer fits them, then they have the right to leave.
By going down the road that Parliament can choose who is, and is not, an MP, we risk our democracy. Sure, it is a long stretch from anti-waka-jumping to Parliamentary control, but it begins a shift in the minds.
I completely agree that if they quit their party, resigning Parliament is the only honourable thing for an insignificant coat-tailing lobbyfodder list MP to do.
But I agree with Greg that party-hopping laws are a bad idea. What's yor view Jeremy? Are you saying Copeland should quit, or are you saying he should be legally compelled to quit (as Greg has read you to be saying)?
Waka-jumping laws just protect political parties from having to live with the consequences of bad list selections. They remove the incentive to pick the right peole in the first place.
ACT deserved to have the Donna problem, because they selected a dodgy charlatan fraudster as a candidate. Labour deserves the embarassment of TPF because they looked the other way over his mis-deeds. National deserves the long-endured pain of knowing Winston is a creature of their own making. And the Peter Dunne party deserved to have its moment of business-tax-cutting glory overshadowed by Copeland's brain explosion because they chose this half-wit to be at the top of their list.
The main redeeming feature of western democracies is that the public occasionally get to see their politicians suffering the embarassment they often deserve. It would be much less fun to watch otherwise.
Greg's largely on the money, except that bit about the German model. Fcuk that. Part of the thing about a representative democracy, is that it is people who count, not parties. As the election spending row has shown, parties can be slippery amorphous buggers.
The buck stops at humans, not parties. Someone is responsible to the people. The price of MMP politics is the same as flatmates or workers; choose carefully because it's nearly impossible to get rid of them once they've moved in. The waka-jumping legislation was just a lazy way for parties to do their job.
Dunne's not the first leader to get a custard pie in the face. It is up to parties to choose the best people for the job. Jim learned this with Alamein Kopu. Prebs learnt it with Donna. Helen has Taito, Key has Connell. Winston might or might not have got the point but whatever happens, the journalists and media will portray it all wrong.
I would say that if he got in by being a List MP, then he should quit Parliament altogether. Maybe not by law, but by morals.
He was elected through a mandate of United Future voters - people who wanted him in Parliament wanted him in because he was in UF. Now that he is no longer in UF, he should not be in Parliament - because he has walked away from his own mandate. The voters that voted for the UF Party vote are now no longer being represented by their party vote, because they have effectively lost a UF voice in Parliament.
He has no mandate as an independent MP. With Turia, she had a mandate from the voters as she was an electorate MP. And anyhow, she proved that mandate by holding a by-election, and winning the vote.
Copeland cannot hold a by-election or anything similar, because he is a Party MP. To try and find a mandate for him specificially would not work due to the nature of the Parliamentary system.
He quits his List party, he should quit Parliament. UF should get the next person on their list.
The people get what the deserve eh Zippy?
Seems to me that the system as it stands works reasonably well: Copeland might still be an MP but he has no credibility in the house and little chance of returning next year (unless, of course, the Xians make yet another shot at it).
Of course, we have an iffy situation with how the numbers stack up, but even Copeland isn't dumb enough to upset that Waka.
I'm with Greg and Zippy on this. Representative democracies should be about the voters and their representatives - Parties are just a way of coordinating the representatives (the fact that they have been made an integral part of the electoral process is one reason I don't like MMP).
It should always be possible for an MP to leave a party if they feel that their party has betrayed their voters or the principles that the party stands for. I don't see why we have to assume that the party is remaining loyal to their support in their electorate and the MP is deviating from it - it could very well be the other way around. And there is no by-election-like process to see what the case is for list seats.
Also, it's not strictly true that a list MP owes everything to their party and their party owes nothing to them. Usually they will have done a lot of work to drum up support for their party, so the party is partly there because of their hard work. In addition, presumably the quality of the MPs on the list has some effect on the standing of the party, too.
Of course, there are always going to be the odd person who uses this mechanism to grandstand. Perhaps that will even be the common case. However, as Zippy suggested, this is really the party's fault for selecting their list MPs so poorly.
Moreover, like whistle-blowing, academic tenure, and the principles we run the criminal justice system on, the ability to leave your party shouldn't be intended for the cases (90%? ) where it just becomes an ability to grandstand or slack off or get away with things, it should be intended for the people who do something useful with it.
Commenting by HaloScan
