I think I kind of get what you're saying, but I'm not sure it really ties in that strongly. With the 5% threshold, matters outside the scope of the review present themselves when we begin to consider issues within the scope of the review. (The 5% threshold is inside the scope of the review, and we would need to remove it to have fair representation, but doing that would raise the issue of difficulties in forming a stable government, and addressing this is outside the scope of the review.) OTOH, I don't think the issue of scrutineering really arises in the same way as a result of considering issues within the scope of the review. And since we can't get it changed in the review, I think it would be best to leave it out. i.e. "Less is more."

So... it would be better to talk about a whole bunch of stuff *except* the things the Pirate Party was created to promote?

Yeah the PPNZ should have done one, but I think we are all struggling to juggle stuff. I am glad you did one though. I myself had completely forgot about the MMP review when choosing a submission to do for uni. I ended up doing one about ultra-fast broadband and digital education which I have submitted.

I am sure the policy committe can still put one together before the final due date, since there is alot of literature around on the subject. The problem is just finding the time.

Mark.

In this context, yes. Our submission probably isn't going to be read by anyone except the Electoral Commission, and the Electoral Commission don't have the authority to consider anything not directly related to the MMP system itself, so including other stuff will only detract from the relevant stuff in our submission.

Kia ora

Submission, an interesting choice of words that. In order to have a voice we must first submit. I do not and will not submit to any government. Ever. In a real democracy I would participate in governance, not submit to it (although that could still involve giving my proxy to someone else at times, even through representative elections).

One of the core problems with the elected dictatorship that gets passed off as democracy in this country is that people are only allowed to choose between pre-processed options - who controls the framing of those options controls the outcome of "democratic process". With the MMP review, rather than giving our true opinion about democracy and electoral systems, we are only given the chance to give an opinion that fits within the intentionally narrow scope of the review. Thus, while I think it's worth offering our ideas so that they can't say "we gave you a chance to have your say and you didn't", I think it's naive to expect them to be listened to, and pointless to blunt them in an attempt to make it more likely.

There is no longer any valid argument for the 5% threshold, or any threshold. All the FUD about what having lots of small parties represented in parliament might do to the stability of government has already happened, particularly with the current government. ACT and United Future are able to give an increasingly unpopular National government a hairs breadth majority even though neither of them had much more electoral support than the Cannabis Party, which without the threshold might have attracted more support than ACT or UF. This makes a farce of the claim that parliament is somehow representative, let alone democratic.

James G's idea of having non-voting reps in the house is creative, but you could organise people to sit in the public gallery and then give oral presentations to select committees with much the same effect. Unless anyone in the PP actually supports having a threshold, I would much rather see a PP opinion which says "abolish the threshold" and puts forward a well-argued and referenced case against the Royal Commission's defence of a threshold. I will be working on a piece along those lines to send into the review under my own name, and I'm happy to share with PP whatever I come up with. Watch this space

The closing date for this is approaching, and I get the impression that no-one else is very keen on my suggestion, so I'm thinking I'll probably just make this as a personal submission.

I've posted my suggestion (with amendments) as a personal submission. <http://www.mmpreview.org.nz/submissions/full/james-calder>

The Commission's proposal paper (linked) is up now. They didn't recommend abolishing the 5% threshold (although they did recommend lowering it to 4%). Nor did they make any mention of the suggestion from my submission (linked)--not surprising I think, since it was one personal submission among, apparently, over 4,600.

Does anyone still think we've got a good chance of abolishing the threshold at this stage? If not, would anyone be keen to see PPNZ have a voice in Parliament, and be willing to ask the Commission to consider my proposal (which technically they were supposed to)? Ideally, it would be good if we could get as many minor parties as possible together on this, or if not, at least do a PPNZ submission. Otherwise I'll just write to them myself again.

James G:
>> would anyone be keen to see PPNZ have a voice in Parliament, and be willing to ask the Commission to consider my proposal (which technically they were supposed to)? Ideally, it would be good if we could get as many minor parties as possible together on this, or if not, at least do a PPNZ submission. <<

What about the idea of allowing the public to address the house from the public gallery by prior appointment? Eg PP reps could apply in advance to sit in the public gallery during a debate on the Patents Bill, and participate in the debate. Maybe at least one MP has to nominate you, and their can only nominate one person/ org per bill, so there can't be more than 120 extra people in the debate (which would get messy).

Another idea: what about a rule change allowing parties/MPs who do have seats in parliament to give their proxy to someone else, issue by issue? For example, let's say Party X (8 seats) decides they support the PP approach to information freedom issues, and recognise that PP has a better technical grasp of these issues. Whenever an IT-related Bill passes through parliament, MPs from Party X nominate PP members to sit in their seat, participate in debate on their behalf, and cast their vote.

Hei kōnā
Strypey

I think it would be better to have full-time MPs because otherwise it may be difficult for the best suited people to have time to also essentially do the work of an MP. Each bill goes through several readings, and if there are several relevant bills it could be tricky to arrange time off work to get to Parliament every time, and then they have to keep in touch with the people they represent, keep up with all the relevant information, and figure out how to best explain it to others (which is a considerable art). If we have full-time MPs, then they don't have to try to fit this workload around their existing jobs (and hopefully fit in time for their families too), because doing this would be their full-time job. And we wouldn't have to fund raise for their travel and accommodation each time (and we shouldn't have to, funding for MPs come out of the public's taxes, and should be allocated fairly, as should representation generally).

In any case, the review is only about MMP specifically, not other aspects of how Parliament/Government works, and I think these suggestions probably fall outside that scope (also, I think new ideas were supposed to be raised in the initial submissions, and this phase is supposed to just be discussing what's already been put forward, although I could be wrong).