Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6:…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
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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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6:…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
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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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6:…, in reply to Geoff Pritchard,
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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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6:…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
The fact that they have Jordan Williams and David Farrar as if they are independent commentators shows how far public broadcasting has gone from reflecting the public.
It was made clear that Jordan was spokesperson for a lobby group. It was never even implied that he was an independent commentator.
Also, I consider that the other panellists provided the required balance to the discussion on this point. Jordan's views were challenged and dissected.
If I could bear to listen more often to the Panel I would tally up the regular contributors. My guess is 10% female, 1% under 40, 1% not pakeha, 90% centre right to extreme right (increased since Bomber was fired).
David Farrar totted them up when the Bomber stuff was going on. He http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2011/10/diversity_at_radio_nz.html listed Panel regulars as follows:
What I have found interesting is the comments by some that Bradbury is the only left wing voice on The Panel or that it is somehow dominated by voices from the right. I decided to check out the panelists from the last month or so, and have categorised them on their leanings based on my knowledge of them.
Lean Right
1. Me
2. Neil Miller
3. John Bishop
4. Michelle Boag
5. Sam Johnson
6. Stephen Franks
7. Deborah Hill-ConeLean Left
1. Michelle A’Court
2. Matt Nippert
3. Martyn Bradbury
4. Jeremy Elwood
5. Simon Pound
6. Duncan Webb
7. Anna Chinn
8. Brian Edwards
9. Mike Williams
10. Gary McCormick
11. Tim Watkin
12. David Slack
13. Islay McLeod
14. Chris Trotter
15. Don Donovan
16. Liz Bowen-Clewley
17. Finlay MacDonald
18. Gary Moore
19. Scott YorkeNot Known
1. Irene Gardiner
2. Rosemary McLeod
3. Tony Doe
4. Graham Bell
5. Jane Clifton
6. Ali Jones
7. David McPhail
8. John Dunne
9. Chris Wikaira
10. Richard Langston
11. Joanne BlackFeel free to declare which 34 of these panellists you consider centre right to extreme right.
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Legal Beagle: Infrequently asked questions, in reply to Richard Aston,
They are in parliament anyway so we will give them a few bonus seats
They’re not bonus seats, they’re the seats they earned by getting tens of thousands of people to vote for them.
In practice it seems to give distorted power to those small parties that gain one seat and as the Epsom case is showing this distortion is deliberately being used to gain disproportionate power in parliament.
It gives disproportionate power to the voters in one electorate, but proportionate power to the party in Parliament.
If you think of the party vote like this: 85,000 votes? That’s enough for 5 MPs. But let’s tell the people who voted for that party that their votes don’t count because not enough of them voted for that party for it to get 6 MPs (which 5% would get you). The party also won an electorate? Okay, we now we won’t tell the people who voted for that party that their votes are meaningless and irrelevant.
The connection between the two might be weak, but the effect of the one-seat rule is that parties get the right number of seats instead of having their parliamentary strength artificially limited.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #5:…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I can’t quite see your logic here, surely the anti MMP crowd want executive control and to neuter the independence of independents and small parties?
People who oppose MMP do so for a number of different reasons.
Some, like Ruth Richardson, oppose it because it means governments cannot be decisive and enact policy they campaigned on: like opening the economy, or introducing the welfare state, which Labour's fourth and first governments did respectively without a majority mandate in an election.
Others oppose MMP because it includes list MPs and has what they view as a too low a level of personal political accountability from MPs.
And some have both complaints, while others have the former complaint, but pretend to have the latter.
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Legal Beagle: Infrequently asked questions, in reply to Tim McKenzie,
if a party wants to contest the party vote, does its list have to be non-empty?
Yes. Section 128(1)(c) of the Electoral Act requires the Electoral Commission to reject a list if it does not contain the name of at least 1 candidate.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6:…, in reply to George Darroch,
Oh for goodness sake. The panel is there for light entertainment. Holding it to any kind of standard is pointless – it has never existed in any other realm.
My fact-checking has never been intended to be about holding people to account for their statements (except maybe my last one on Vote for Change's misleading ad). Instead it has been about letting people know information. If you listened to the panel, or if you didn't, you might read my post and realise something new, or have a misconception corrected, and be able to make an-ever-so-slightly more-informed decision. I don't pretend a lot of people will read it, or that I'll have a big impact through my blogging, but if the sum of knowledge about issues of public importance increases, I'll consider my time well-spent.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #6:…, in reply to Dave Guerin,
Graeme, I really value your fact checking, but you seem to be parsing opinions here rather than checking specific facts.
That is often the case. I think that was what I intimated when I did my first fact-check. Sometimes it's correcting errors, sometimes it's providing context or further information, and sometimes is pointing out ill-considered argument.
And your second reviewed comment, by Matt Nippert, takes him to task for an implication that MMP requires more than 50% voter support to get things done, but the comment from Nippert doesn’t have any such clear implication.
I was perhaps reading too much into it, but on it's face, what was said was that under MMP, you needed a majority in Parliament. That statement is so trite, that I considered Matt must have had a broader point, other than the false implication that under FPP you could pass laws without a majority in Parliament. I asked myself 'what is he getting at?' and concluded he was likely drawing a distinction between FPP Parliaments where you needed a majority, but that majority was made up by one party, even though the party itself didn't have majority support and an MMP Parliament where you need a majority, but that is made up by parties that between them do have more than the minority support of governments of old.
And anyway, do we really hold The Panel to any serious standard of discussion or debate?
I don't listen to it enough to know generally, but I thought these were pretty good, especially the SM vs STV discussion that has been sadly missing from elsewhere.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #5:…, in reply to Jeanette King,
I’d like to keep MMP (with some minor tweaks re thresholds, etc) so my strategy is to vote for keeping MMP and with the second part I’m thinking of voting for FPP on the basis that if we do end up with another referendum with MMP vs the top polling choice I figure it’d be easier to get people to vote against FPP because it’s so demonstrably unfair. Any thoughts?
If you like MMP because of things like representation, or coalitions etc. then think you should cast your second vote for STV (unless you really hate the idea of voting with numbers), which is the closest alternative you have in the current options. If you like MMP because it gives you two votes, with local MPs and lists, vote for SM.
Sometimes tactical voting can be a good idea. I do not consider this is such an instance: just vote honestly in both questions.