Comments
From: Who Are These People?
  • Whips: Howard ... Latham ... served notice to the states

    This is quite a depressing election campaign.  It\'s just pure bribery and grasping from beginning to end.  Medicare Gold is so dumb - let\'s catch up with the Europeans and Americans by building our own demographic timebombs!

    I had thought the UK practiced internal party discipline the same as Au had.

    It does.  The whips are a powerful force, it\'s much closer to Australia in this regard.  However conscience votes are more common, and crossing the floor is unusual but not extraordinarily rare.  I get the feeling it\'s more common since Blair\'s landslide in 1997, but precedent existed.  Large numbers of Labor MPs have no prospect of ever getting to cabinet (some were chucked out), and have a lifetime of angry lefty protest against Thatcher behind them.  So there\'s a faction of rebel MPs within the Labor party that are essentially Old Labor - command and control social democrats.  These voted against the Iraq war in a block.  They also vote against choice in health and education policy.  A number of distinguished Tories also voted against the Iraq war and crossed the floor on whatever that blasted rule on schools not promoting homosexuality is called - Section 28 or something.

    The point is they do so without their seat or their party membership being at risk - in fact some of them would have improved their electoral prospects by being rebels.

    Canada and India would be two other interesting comparisons, I don\'t know much about either.

    In the US House of Representives the Au style of party discipline is taking over

    This is a worry to me.  One of the appeals of the American system is the relative independence of the representatives.  This, combined with the legal strength of the committees is why they can get away without institutions like Question Time.

    Party discpline shows the limits of a representative system in relation to public good.

    I think I would agree with almost all of that sentence: Party discpline shows the limits of a representative system in relation to the public.  I think parties are a sail used to tack against the wind of popular opinion.  Sometimes this is used for good: Australian economic reform in the eighties would not have happenned without using parties as ideological instruments.

    you could be the \"Minister for Everything\"

    I\'ll need to put a lot more work into my beergut to qualify for that role :)