Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6: Afternoons with Jim Mora
64 Responses
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
The argument that “MMP needs 120 MPs” is based on the assertion that the maximum practicable size for an electorate is 1/70th of the population. Thus, the current 70 electorates are already as large as they could possibly be.
That strikes me as unlikely, given that we've had an MMP system with 60 general electorates. We've also had as few as 24 electorates under FPP (electing 37 Members). And even if we have 60/63/70 electorates, you'll also need to explain why we need 60/57/50 list seats.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
So the National Party says that National Radio doesn’t have a right wing bias, and we must believe them.
No. That's why I invited others to disagree with the categorisation.
And you’ll notice that Farrar’s analysis doesn’t look at the time people got, just the fact that they appeared.
No. It was a list of people who appeared over a month. There were a little under 40 names. At 10 a week, there might be a few double-ups, but most would have appeared only once.
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Sacha, in reply to
if we upset them, they'll go off and form an independent federal state with Tasmania
and take all their frozen lamb and gold with them.
Oh, wrong century. -
Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
But less than a third of the whole list are women and I still bet none of the regulars are non pakeha and/or under 40.
I don't believe Scott Yorke is 40. Nor Matt Nippert?
And I've no idea whether Chris Wikaira is a regular, but profiling would suggest some level of non-pakeha-ness, and google (http://brg.co.nz/people/wikaraC.htm) suggests "Chris Wikaira’s tribal affiliations are Ngati Maniapoto, Nga Puhi and Pakeha." If you're taking issue with that, non-pakeha may be a tough criterion to defeat.
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martinb, in reply to
This doesn't show the proportion per show (particularly of late) or of how each issue is dealt with- the way a host backs an opinion or frames a topic.
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Here is October's List, which I extracted from the website thanks to regular URLs. I'm not on Facebook, so can't easily look up peoples demographic info. This list has them seperately for each appearance so accounts for frequency. There was a little copy/pasting so there might be a manual error, but the total seems accurate:
Anna Chin
Anna Chinn
Barry Corbett
Bomber Bradbury
Brian Edwards
Brian Edwards
Chris Trotter
Chris Wikaira
David Farrar
David Slack
Duncan Webb
Finlay MacDonald
Finlay MacDonald
Garry Moore
Garry Moore
Gary McCormick
Irene Gardiner
Jeremy Elwood
Jock Anderson
Joe Bennett
John Bishop
John Bishop
John Dunne
Jonathan Krebs
Kevin Milne
Mark Inglis
Matt Nippert
Michele A'Court
Michelle Boag
Michelle Boag
Mike Williams
Neil Miller
Neil Miller
Nevil Gibson
Penny Ashton
Raybon Kan
Rosemary McLeod
Scott Yorke
Simon Pound
Sir Bruce Slane
Tino Pereira
Tony Doe -
Geoff Pritchard, in reply to
how do you get from 70 to 120 rather than 140? Maori seats?
MMP uses the list seats to achieve proportionality. For this to work nicely, the list seats need to be roughly 40% of the total; having 70 electorates thus implies 120 (-ish) seats in all.
It's not a hard-and-fast requirement - the system would still work with fewer list seats, but there would be a risk of less-proportional outcomes. Since proportionality is one of the main things MMP has going for it, that would be a serious flaw.
The Maori seats (currently 7) are included in the total of 70 electorates.
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Hilary Stace, in reply to
OK two men who may be not quite 40 and one conservative Maori man. Not much a nod towards equity.
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Geoff Pritchard, in reply to
The notion that electorates can't possibly be larger than 1/70th of the population isn't one I subscribe to myself.
It's interesting to note that MMP could work just fine with a 99-seat Parliament - if we were willing to reduce the number of electorates from 70 to 60 (leaving 39 list seats to maintain proportionality with). That doesn't seem so different from the first MMP election in 1996, which had 65 electorates.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
OK two men who may be not quite 40 and one conservative Maori man. Not much a nod towards equity.
And looking at October above:
Raybon Kan, Simon Pound, Penny Ashton, Tino Pereira, Mark Inglis, Jeremy Elwood.
I think. -
Because I have trouble not doing extensive unasked research on topics for no reward, here is the canonical list of people who, in the period 01 Feb 2011 to 31 Oct 2011, made up 72% of panel appearances in order of frequency:
Name (appearances)
Neil Miller (12)
Graham Bell (12)
David Farrar (12)
Finlay MacDonald (11)
David Slack (10)
Tony Doe (9)
Bomber Bradbury (9)
Rosemary McLeod (9)
Michelle Boag (9)
Gary McCormick (9)
Chris Trotter (9)
Brian Edwards (8)
Mark Inglis (8)
John Bishop (8)
Bernard Hickey (8)
Irene Gardiner (8)
Sue Wells (7)
Stephen Franks (7)
Simon Pound (7)
Barry Corbett (7)
Matt Nippert (7)
Jock Anderson (7)
Jane Clifton (7)
Islay Mcleod (7)
Tim Watkin (6)
Duncan Webb (6)
Sir Bruce Slane (6)
Raybon Kan (6)
Penny Ashton (6)
Ali Jones (6)
Michelle A'Court (6)
Julia Hartley-Moore (6)
Jonathan Krebs (6)Regardless of how baby-boom complacency the panel is weighted, I wish to point out the afternoon show it replaced had a regular spot for homeopathic pet treatments.
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Leaving aside the tower of Pisa discussion (which way it tilts depends on where one stands), the MMP system was dreamt up by victorious Allied forces after WW2 and foisted on Germany.to block any future German power blocs setting off another major war.
Within the context of the 1940's it made sense from the Allies point of view, "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" etc.
Whether this idea holds up in a non militaristic sense is questionable. Germany is certainly calling the shots financially within the EC. An irony I find deeply amusing.
Nevertheless MMP tends to preclude powerful lobby groups allying with certain parties to overwhelm the rest of us.
The NAZIS came in via a preferential system.
MMP has its minor irritations but it is the best system for a truly democratic pluralistic society..
It would be salutary for all of us to go back to the original recommendations.
What we have is not quite what was in the original report.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Pryer engagement….
Because I have trouble not doing extensive unasked
research on topics for no rewardThere must be a suitable name for that wonderful condition…
:- ) -
Hilary Stace, in reply to
How about age, ethnicity, socio-economic decile and voting record while you are at it?
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
The NAZIS came in via a preferential system.
Nope. Proportional. The change after the war was to introduce electorates (and the new threshold, I think).
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I live in the south island, I don’t care if we have 16, 15, 14 etc MPs. Just as long as we get a fair number based on how many of us there are.
To be fair, if there were fewer (general) seats in the South Island, they would start to be hilariously unmanageably large.
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Sacha, in reply to
like the Maori electorates, you mean?
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Pretty much. There's a real problem with the size of the Maori seats and some of the Southern general seats. It is really problematic that if someone living in Blenheim is on the Maori Roll, then it is almost always half a day's travel to meet the MP, or even see their office.
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Miche Campbell, in reply to
It's a variant of Helium Hand Syndrome.
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It is really problematic that if someone living in Blenheim is on the Maori Roll, then it is almost always half a day’s travel to meet the MP, or even see their office.
The Maori MPs are given much greater funding for travel around their electorate and locally based support staff, to help address this problem. It doesn't solve it; still much harder than driving across Mangere, but it's a decent compromise.
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Arguing about the the makeup of the panel’s guests isn’t the half of it. The panel frequently has Mora inviting on and interviewing hard-right commentators, to whom Mora then proceeds to lob gentle tennis ball questions.
Mora’s loaded guest list and questioning technique was perfectly illustrated by his patsy interview with Jordan Williams. For example, Mora asked Williams about his “vote for change” front-group and Williams was allowed to say his organisation is “…a membership-driven, grassroots campaign…” without challenge. Mora simply let William’s statement sit as fact for his audience. This is despite the astroturfing nature of William’s/Shirtcliffe organisation being well documented and remarked on in the media – as for example here and here and here – and any two minute Google search would have revealed that. Any journalist worth his or her salt should surely have at least raised this question, and asked about Peter Shirtcliffe’s involvement with the vote for change organisation as well. Failing to do so raises serious questions about Mora’s partiality, since he is a smart and well informed guy and he must have known Williams was basically lying. The other option is Jim Mora is simply an incompetent journalist not fit to run his afternoon show.
This isn’t an isolated example of Mora’s style of right wing loaded “journalism”, just the most recent to hand. He does it all the time. having Brian Edwards and Michelle Boag on your panel may maintain a veneer of “balance”, but the truth is Mora seems to carefully screen his subject matter experts to present an often very right wing view against which his “left wing” panel member is frequently reduced to playing the role of token opponent to a hegemonistic conservative world view.
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merc,
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Major arguments for 120 MPs were the hope that any governing body of MPs (be it one party or many) would have a sufficient number of people in it to provide enough competent people to populate any Cabinet…and also a large enough backbench that the executive might have their chain yanked if they became too dictatorial. People who recommended 120 MPs had the Muldoon cabinets very much in mind where the Cabinet was almost the larger part of the governing National Party caucus….and with the usual complement of dead wood, time-servers and faithful retainers.
I’d prefer 150.
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Sacha, in reply to
greater numbers were also meant to better power Select Committee work, I recall
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merc,
The myth of the hard working minister must be maintained, 19 hours a day 7 days a week you know.
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