In July, Attorney General Eric Holder filed a lawsuit, arguing that the state should be required to undergo some form of preclearance with districting plans. A month before, the United States Supreme Court had struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that the Texas redistricting plan was no longer subject to federal preclearance requirements.
In his lawsuit, Holder called on a judge to review the districting proposal, and cited "evidence of intentional racial discrimination that was presented" in another lawsuit, Texas v. Holder in 2012. The 2012 ruling denied the state preclearance to enact a potential voter identification law, and Holder used the suit as a springboard for suggesting that similar federal approval would again be necessary.
In response to the most recent case, Abbott denied that redistricting practices were racially motivated, but revealed that political interests were very much at work.
"In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party's electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats," read a court brief filed by Abbott.
Abbott also qualified the tactics, noting that partisan districting decisions are still constitutional, despite "incidental effects on minority voters." The brief cites Hunt v. Cromartie, a South Carolina case in which it was decided that "[a] jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact."
Partisan gerrymandering, while legal, is an often frowned upon. Before John Paul Stevens' 2010 retirement, the then-Supreme Court justice criticized the Indoor Positioning System, asserting that it is "very, very harmful to the community at large."
Gentlemen, welcome to the program. We know that both your parties support offshore processing, Nauru and PNG as partners in that, mandatory detention, a regional solution involving our neighbours, particularly Indonesia, a humanitarian refugee intake, the use of Navy and Customs to respond to boats. Given all that common ground, what do each of you consider to be the single biggest point of difference in your policy approach - Tony Burke?
My focus is on implementation, and I think it's fair to say the greatest frustration that I've found have been the attempts from the Opposition to claim that the arrangements with Papua New Guinea will not be appropriately implemented. The entire policy and framework depends on the extent to which people will test our resolve because that determines how many people end up being affected by it. Now, we will have whatever capacity is required, but the more there is a discussion here implying that we won't implement it, the more people will put their lives at risk at the high seas.
Our focus has always been on deterrence, deterrence first. Now that obviously includes turning boats back where it's safe to do so, but it's a deterrence model that goes all the way up the chain and bringing all of that for implementation purposes under a single command and making sure that you have the ability to respond to issues as they arise because this is a daily struggle. The other key difference is form, indoor Tracking. Our form is we've got this done before. Our record shows that we have and the proven resolve and commitment and consistency. We've always believed in these policies. The Government has had every point in the compass on this debate.
No, we in fact brought an excision bill for the Australian mainland into the Parliament and the Labor Party opposed it. The only change we made was to bring children out of held detention. Now there were just over 50 people who were children in held detention at that time and we successfully did that. Now the big difference between us and the Government is - I have no doubt about the minister's earnest intention to get children out of held detention; his predecessor once removed held the same intention, but he failed miserably 'cause boats kept turning up with children on them. And so, no, we weren't winding it back. It was the Labor Party and Kevin Rudd who got rid of the border protection measures that worked under John Howard and 50,000 people have turned up since at a cost of $9 billion.
Factually inaccurate what he said about the final term of the Howard Government. I don't want to spend the whole night on the history, but I can't let Scott get away with claiming that children out of detention was the only thing that happened in that final term. The vast majority of people on temporary protection visas who were told they'd never be given permanent visas were given them. All but two of the people who were on Naura who'd been told they would never be settled in Australia were settled in Australia. To claim that those things never happened is just dishonest.
Well, effectively what you've got is you can - if you go back over, say, the last seven days or something like that to the first seven days of the policy, you find a significant tapering down. Now depending on how many days you go, you'll get a different percentage, between 40 per cent and 20 per cent. But it only tells part of the story because you've effectively got backfilling. People who would have got on boats had the policy not been in place, not getting on at all and refusing to get on, while people smugglers offering cut-price deals, desperately trying to backfill. They are steadily running out of the number of customers 'cause the product has been taken from them.
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