Meaningful And Effective Citizen Initiated Referenda

What would help?

• more rigour on setting the questions
• a regular cycle giving expected dates
• a more explicit expectation that someone will do something about the outcome
• a lower triggering threshold (e.g. 5%)?

third reading veto

Graeme Edgeler 16 Feb 2009 08:21

One way of attaining more meaningful CIR would be to allow people to tie the votes to (passed) legislation. Allow people, within a short time after the enactment of a piece of legislation to start a formal petition to negate the third reading of the bill - effectively overturning it.

There could certainly be issues:

• the interim and transitional periods could get messy for some legislation
• you might want some legislation (appropriations acts, for example) exempted

Instead of having a non-binding question like "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?", if a group had applied to start the petition within say 1-month of the royal assent being given to the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007, they would be permitted to collect signatures for a binding referendum asking "Should the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 be overturned?"

This would avoid a number of the problems inherent in binding CIR … what would a binding CIR asking the question "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" mean?

Re: third reading veto

IdiotSavant 16 Feb 2009 09:53

Negative refernda are easy, and allow the people to say "oi! no!" to the government - and not just on smacking; I can see them being used on any atempts at future privatisation, for example. At the same time, they're exclusively reactive and negative; they can be used to maintain the status quo, but not to advance any positive agenda (which is what a lot of people seem to want). Still, they can be done independently, and so be seen as making up part of the overall picture.

How would you envision the binding section working? How do you draft a law which says "the relevant Act is repealed and the law returned to the status quo ante before it was passed"?

Re: third reading veto

Graeme Edgeler 01 Apr 2009 01:23

I recently discover that Italy has exactly this sort of CIR, although interestingly, you can't start the petition until a year after the law was passed. I may look into it.

Is it possible?

RJL 19 Feb 2009 04:22

Is it possible to have "Meaningful And Effective Citizen Initiated Referenda"?

Short of using professional writers there seems no way to guarantee that the question will be meaningful. Even then, professional writers are not really any guarantee of meaningfulness —- and will cause all sorts of problems about who it is that is tasked with doing the writing and how they might be chosen. Citizen Referenda seem to be all about mob rule; which is not quite the same thing as democracy.

I think that it would better to drop any pretence of Citizen Referenda, and instead have very strong mechanisms for MPs to bring independent motions, bills, etc to parliament. Afterall, MPs are meant to be representing the people, so bringing people's concerns to parliament would seem to be a very important duty. We could also have much better reporting on what goes on at parliament —- so that people can understand what is and is not being debated and thought about by our representatives.

Last edited on 19 Feb 2009 04:24 by RJL Show more

Re: Is it possible?

AnitaNZ 19 Feb 2009 05:10

I'm happy with the questions being professionally written. Someone would go to the Office of the Clerk, describe the issue they wanted a CIR on, and get some acceptable questions back, they would then pick one and start collecting signatures.

Re: Is it possible?

Ari54 19 Feb 2009 05:57

You could require referenda questions to be a yes/no to a draft bill proposal, which is then read in Parliament?

Would make it more annoying to ignore them and would force more precise wording- you just require a purpose clause and nick it for the referendum question.