| Looking to the Future - Unibot for CoA |
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Looking to the Future
[Image: SHQY7Ss.png] I'll be honest and say I didn't intend to run for a third term until this last month when it became apparent to me that (1) I love my work as Chair, and I'm going to miss it, and (2) my work isn't finished by any stretch of the imagination. I've still got the fight in me for another term and it became abundantly clear as I started planning out in my head what I would do with a third term, that I was not going to throw in the towel yet. Elections have always been difficult for me; I have a lot of enemies and it's always come as an uphill fight to prove myself once more to voters - a sweaty, grueling mess - which I didn't think up until around February that I'd be willing to go through once more. I never think of myself as any but the underdog. February came, and the Great Council ended and I realized, while I had met my objectives for the term, there was still quite a lot of work to do to facilitate those changes. Some of the successes that I've been proud to oversee, include...
Some of these reforms require more work - the Local Council elections have to be launched next month, while the Midterm Reports are to be done in May. I've got some ideas in which an Assembly-wide report could be composed on the SPSF, but I think it's going to be an exciting challenge - one that I look forward to. There are a few different options that I could use (i.e., presenting a majority opinion, a minority opinion or fragmenting the report based on individuals) and the plan would change depending on how the debate went - because a more harmonious debate could mean a less divided report - but whatever the outcome, I'd like the report to be something that the future MoA feels is useful to them. I don't want it to seem like just a intrusion, but instead it should be constructive feedback on our army and its development. I'd also like to look into the Regional Holidays law - recently, the Assembly was close to repealing the law altogether. I think, instead of getting rid of our regional holidays, we could look at adding and changing the dates, to find something that better reflects the relaxed, tropical character of TSP. I also think that the current debate on forum moves has hit a standstill and I'd like to help develop a compromise which could bridge those concerns and find a way forward that doesn't involve using a non-functioning server. Finally, the issue of the courts and its relationship with regional security has become an increasingly prominent discussion in The South Pacific and it's something that we'll have to address - my first thoughts going into the debate is, how much can actually be accomplished and what could be accomplished? I don't think a proposal to reform that relationship has yet to really catch that consensus that we need, but I'd like to see it come to being. I think, especially reflecting back on my time as a Justice, the overarching problem with the court is that few people really trust the court to "get it right" - and that's a problem that occurs across the board in all almost every NS region. Politics and the justice system don't mix well. So often, justice systems are only used by politicians when they want to abdicate the responsibilities of decision-making. As far as many politicians are concerned, the justice system can be an uncertain decision-maker - where it would make one decision one week, and another decision the next week. That's not a problem with the current court, however, that is a problem with courts in general. To resolve this tension, there's three ways in which we could approach that problem: (1) limit the ability of people to avoid using the courts, (2) increase their confidence in the courts, (3) broaden the powers of the court. I think that the current opinion often is the latter option, but I don't think this can be an either/or decision - we need a package of smaller reforms that reduces the scope in which people can avoid the courts, and in doing so we need to increase their confidence in the courts. I would look at cases of political pardoning and statue of limitations, for example; should the government be able to "pardon" players? At what point are criminal cases too old to prosecute? These aren't overarching questions, but they're grey areas that need to be resolved, in my opinion, as part of a "new deal" for the judiciary - a package of reform to help bolster confidence in the courts as a consistent decision-maker, and a fair arbiter. Bah, that was a mouthful. Whatever may come of this election, it's been a blast. A real honour and a pleasure and I wish my competitors well in the election too. If you've got questions... oh who am I kidding? Let the interrogation begin. 
Personally, I'd really like to see the package about judicial reform being put into action. As things currently stand, the power of the Courts are rather limited, and furthermore, it is not written in law that the Court's decisions are essentially legally binding, and that has to change.
On the same point, since you have raised the point that members of the community should have more confidence in the Courts, I, and I believe my fellow Justices as well, would appreciate it if you yourself had more confidence in the Courts instead of doubting almost every Bill that the Justices have proposed in the Assembly. The bottom line: practice what you preach.
Well actually that's the point of what I said: I want actual reforms that gives people more confidence in the courts. Building confidence means building an understanding that decisions by the courts will be fair and consistent. You can't just tell people: 'be more confident,' that's not how to do it.
There are a number of grey areas in our law, like statute of limitations, where the court has a lot of leeway - it could rule something one week or something the other week. As a citizen, and as a former justice, I would have to say that kind of unpredictability doesn't bestow confidence. I would also dispute your belief that the Court's decision are legally-binding. The issue is that there isn't a clear method of restitution laid out in the constitution, but the charter absolutely does stress that the courts can strike laws down if they find them contradictory to the Charter. This is something I did in 2012 as the Minister of Justice. Restitution is a more complex subject because it's something our forefathers hadn't anticipated - areas where the executive makes a decision and the process is illegal, but the law isn't. There, the only option for the courts is to strike down the whole law (which they can't, because the law isn't contradictory) and inadvertently, reverse the executive's decision. That is a loophole and it's one that hadn't occurred to us when the charter was written. My first thought on how to resolve that issue is to say that the people can approach the court about whether or not an executive decision followed their mandate. For example, let's use the Belschaft example - Belschaft could approach the court about whether or not his declaration as a security threat was consistent with Article 1 which laid out the security threat protocols - and justices could look at the cabinet's threads, see a discussion regarding their security having taken place and a vote - and rule that procedure and proper process was followed. If the courts see evidence that the cabinet didn't take a vote, or worse, the discussion was mostly in regards to things not related to security, then the courts could rule proper process was not followed. This way, the Assembly is making the final decision on whether a cabinet's decision was good and the court is making the final decision on whether the cabinet's decision was legal. I have to admit I've been confused by your proposed amendments to Article 1.4 because they seem to confine themselves to one section of the law, the Bill of Rights, even though the executive's mandates are elsewhere in the law, so you can't use that law to rule that procedure wasn't followed, just that rights were contravened. I also don't necessarily see the point because I'd imagine executive decisions, if they violate the Bill of Rights, would violate the Bill of Rights for all similar executive decisions. For example, if the court found that the decision on Belschaft was contradictory to the Bill of Rights, I can't imagine any security threat declaration not contradicting the Bill of Rights, so the courts route of restitution should just be to remove those offending sections of the charter. And then that's when I kind of whapped myself in RL, whispering 'the Bill of Rights doesn't supersede the rest of the Charter, you idiot,' - however, the courts do have the (admittedly) vague power to 'reconcile contradictions within the Charter,' (Article 4.1.4) I suspect, however, what could be possible is to give precedence to the Bill of Rights in the Charter and allow the justices to reconcile contradictions in the Charter with the Bill of Rights, a la the Canadian example. The first problem that kind of change would face is whether or not the provisions on adspam contradicts the freedom of speech clauses, but legislation could always resolve that issue. Basically what I'm saying is I'm not sure your amendments to Article 1.4 are the way to go about this, but I'd like to help you develop a strong proposal (it very well might look different than I've suggested here) to resolve the problem. Quote:My first thought on how to resolve that issue is to say that the people can approach the court about whether or not an executive decision followed their mandate. For example, let's use the Belschaft example - Belschaft could approach the court about whether or not his declaration as a security threat was consistent with Article 1 which laid out the security threat protocols - and justices could look at the cabinet's threads, see a discussion regarding their security having taken place and a vote - and rule that procedure and proper process was followed. If the courts see evidence that the cabinet didn't take a vote, or worse, the discussion was mostly in regards to things not related to security, then the courts could rule proper process was not followed. This way, the Assembly is making the final decision on whether a cabinet's decision was good and the court is making the final decision on whether the cabinet's decision was legal.I appreciate this thought and I do know that while I am not the most eloquent at legal text drafting, the intention behind Article 1.4 was more or less this in a narrower scope. And yes, I probably owe you an apology for what I said before, so yes, I'm sorry. And I'll be willing to work on this and other related reforms should the both of us get elected.
No worries, not a problem. Thanks for asking your questions, Awe.
I'll be asking this to all who want to be re-elected, what have you done in your current position?
Europeian Ambassador to The South Pacific
Former Local Council Member Former Minister of Regional Affairs Former High Court Justice
What is one thing you would have liked to do differently in your last term?
What is the most important piece of legislation you would like to get passed? (03-16-2015, 12:43 PM)Punchwood Wrote: I'll be asking this to all who want to be re-elected, what have you done in your current position? I've mediated a number of important discussions in the Assembly, often suggesting the compromises that were eventually used to break the standstills that debate had fallen into. I've mentioned a number of those discussions in my platform, including a redrafting of the Bill of Rights and the Freedom of Speech, in addition to the creation of a Local Council. I also worked closely with the Election Reform Commission to write and develop the report on alternative voting systems. My day-to-day work as Chair is pretty visible - I open votes, chair discussions, close votes, manage changes to the law and update the Assembly's Index (which I built). To answer your first question, Hile: I believe the most important discussion that I've chaired is the Local Council and I'm happy to have overseen it - I think it'll be an institution that will live and breathe for many years to come, perhaps even outliving me in TSP. It's a gift to posterity. There are a lot of pressing issues that require sort of piecemeal, or perhaps more extensive changes to the law, which I noted in my platform - I suspect the most important debate that the new Chair will face is what to do about the forum. We're stuck in between a hard place and a rock at the moment and I really want to get the chance to see that overcome - to see us come to a relative consensus on what to do about our forum. As for what I would have done differently... I think the natural answer is that the Great Council could have been done differently. I'm not sure about that, however. I think it did it's job and while it become a site of antagonism, passions and regional drama, it also served as a platform for people to voice their opinions on institutions in TSP - like the SPSF, CSS and the Courts. Institutions which I hadn't anticipated as being the target of reform for last term. We came out of the Great Council with an understanding that there were still issues with how these big, "classic" institutions were running and that we needed to reform them - some of those reforms have taken place, some of those are still up in the air. If I were to have done anything differently, I would have rethought the Election Commission report; it was a stretch to get it done in time for this upcoming elections and I wanted to do more with it, but with the other commissioners stretched for time, it fell on me to get the report written and so, it was what it was, but I had had higher hopes of making it more informative for readers than it ended up being - part of the challenge for me is I'm an academic, so it's actually more work for me to parse down what I'm saying in ways that laypeople can understand more easily. Quote:My first thought on how to resolve that issue is to say that the people can approach the court about whether or not an executive decision followed their mandate. For example, let's use the Belschaft example - Belschaft could approach the court about whether or not his declaration as a security threat was consistent with Article 1 which laid out the security threat protocols - and justices could look at the cabinet's threads, see a discussion regarding their security having taken place and a vote - and rule that procedure and proper process was followed. If the courts see evidence that the cabinet didn't take a vote, or worse, the discussion was mostly in regards to things not related to security, then the courts could rule proper process was not followed. This way, the Assembly is making the final decision on whether a cabinet's decision was good and the court is making the final decision on whether the cabinet's decision was legal. How is that different from our judicial review proposal that was heavily criticised?!?!
Recently some people got confused about what they were voting on with the Elections Act. What do you think happened there, and how do you propose we prevent that kind of confusion in the future?
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