Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 June 30

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June 30

NZ parliamentary bills (June 22)

See wash-up period. Came to prominence during the Brexit litigation. 2A00:23C5:C70B:500:ED1E:D467:15F0:EBAE (talk) 14:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it makes sense to compare the situation in the UK to the recent on in NZ too closely. Since the premiership of John Key, it's been the norm to announce the date of elections including final sitting day, and when parliament will be dissolved, well in advanced e.g. [1] [2] [3] [4]. In other words, there isn't generally days to finalise stuff, there's months. (Although as I understand it the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 means the date should sort of be fixed anyway, except for unusual elections. And of course, there's only been one fixed-term election but 2 called early due to Brexit.)

Note that as discussed in that previous discussion, in NZ bills can and in recent times often are re-instated in the next parliament continuing from where they were and this is decided by the next parliament. The example given in the previous discussion was [5] which was a change from a (basically) National government to a Labour lead coalition yet you can see many were re-instated. Although an interesting example may be the Income-Sharing Tax Credit Bill [6] which was not re-instated but first introduced in 2010 sort of demonstrating that bills cant continue for a while between parliaments. (To be fair, that bill basically died in 2011 [7] as it was mostly supported by United Future who sort of faded into irrelevance [8].)

To be clear, there were elections in 2011 and 2014 before the 2017 one lead to a parliament which chose not to re-instate it. It's perhaps worth remembering that parliament terms in NZ are only 3 years so requiring a restart for all legislation each time may lead to either rushed legislation or quite long proportions of time where legislation may be too late to be introduced.

As I understand it, the situation in the UK is fairly different as parliament cannot carry-over bills between parliaments, only between sessions which has to be done at the end of the session with a separate motion for each bill [9] [10]. Even then it seems bills may not be carried over between sessions so much? [11] (And compared to reinstating bills at the next session in NZ's parliament which as the example showed, is a single motion.)

Nil Einne (talk) 18:46, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

BTW, it's worth considering that even in 2008 New Zealand general election, the date of the next election was announced on 12 September and parliament was dissolved on 3 October. (I'm not sure when the last sitting day was.) I'm not sure what the norm in the UK is but by comparison, it seems in the 2010 United Kingdom general election the date was announced on 6 April with dissolution being on 12 April, although the date for the next election was widely expected anyway as I think is often the case when parliaments in the UK basically sit out their maximum term. It's perhaps also worth considering that the 3 year term in NZ also means that there is a lot less opportunity for a governing party/PM to try and gain an advantage by calling an early election. Of the 3 listed in Elections in New Zealand, only the 1951 New Zealand general election was over a year early and called amidst a strike. The 1984 New Zealand general election was a few months, and called in, um unusual circumstances as our articles notes and ended up fairly disastrous to boot. The 2002 New Zealand general election was similar only a few months albeit was successful for the PM but I don't think it being called early was necessarily considered to have gained that much advantage. And you'd also note in each 3 cases the Prime Ministers of the day at least tried to give a reason for the early elections. This is not to suggest there wasn't fiddling with dates to try and gain an advantage, as our article notes it was generally perceived there was. But in most cases by far, only over a fairly short time period enough so the elections aren't really called snap or early. See also [12] Nil Einne (talk) 19:27, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

What exactly is the question you're trying to answer, User:Nil Einne? I can't see any sign of one from the OP. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:11, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

The OP has referred to this previous discussion Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 June 22#NZ parliamentary bills and has implied that the washup period as common in the UK [13] is relevant to that question surrounding how the dissolution of NZ's parliament interacts with bills haven't yet been passed into law in modern times. My suggestion is it is not, since in that aspect our parliaments are fairly different. These differences have likely developed for several reasons including differences in terms of parliament, which itself has lead to differences in when and how elections have called; combined with other cultural differences arising for a variety of reasons including I suspect our use of MMP. In other words, the OP didn't pose a question, but they did answer a question in a fashion I considered likely to mislead so I offered a response explaining why I felt their answer was misleading. Things may have been different in the past [14], I'm not sure, I'm mostly thinking of how things work in the modern MMP era even if some aspects have been around for a long time. Nil Einne (talk) 07:59, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Border of the zone that some call Palestine and some call Israel and some call 2 or 3 states

Why is the southwest border of that zone not straight? How was this border chosen? Most of it is a less unstraight portion that if extended goes to about where it becomes inconveniently hilly to build on the west edge of the Indian Ocean urban area. Near this port it bends a little west of this not quite a line, presumably to keep the urban area (probably just a tiny village when this border was made but possible future growth was foreseeable) out of the range of several mile weapons and keep the top of the mountain range overlooking the city out of Egypt for longer than if the not quite straight line was followed. Why was a little not quite desert left in Sinai? How was the northern border chosen (the one from the Mediterranean to the gutter of the Jordanoaqaba Valley)? Why are parts of the eastern border not on the bottom of the Jordanoaqaba Valley cross-section? Like the part near the Sea of Galilee which is east of the lakeshore and River and the part I saw in the riverless part which is west of the lowest contour on Google Maps Terrain. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:09, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

For a start, see Nurit Kliot (1995). "The Evolution of the Egypt-Israel Boundary: From Colonial Foundations to Peaceful Borders". International Boundaries Research Unit, University of Durham. ISBN 1-897643-17-9. This is a 27-page monograph (downloadable as a PDF) that goes into a fair bit of detail, including the demarcation of the boundary line in the summer of 1906 and what the author refers to as "The Taba Dispute" of 1981-88. Also see Reports of International Arbitral Awards: Case concerning the location of boundary markers in Taba between Egypt and Israel (29 September 1988). Mathew5000 (talk) 20:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC)