by frog
Every time we shoot down a Government argument against Green legislation to stop the Black Caps’ tour, they shift the ground and come up with another one. In the last few days, the Government has started tip-toeing away from the argument that the legislation infringes on Kiwis’ fundamental human rights (because it knows it has lost this argument, and it knows it can’t produce any legal advice to back up its claims), and started putting forward the “it would be an abuse of Parliamentary process to force such a law through Parliament under urgency” argument.
Martin Kay of the Dominion Post asked the Prime Minister at her post-Cabinet press conference yesterday whether the Government would reconsider passing a law to stop the Black Caps’ tour of Zimbabwe, in light of the fact that a majority of Kiwis support that course of action. She replied:
The proposition put to the Government was that there should be legislation under urgency to prevent national sports teams travelling to another country. That is territory no New Zealand government has ever entered into and we don’t propose to.
Phil Goff has made similar statements. We couldn’t force such a law through Parliament, under urgency, without public consultation, without select committee scrutiny. That would be bad.
Well, the Greens usually aren’t crazy about urgency either, believing that it should only be used for matters which really are urgent. That is, it should only be used for time-specific legislation, which aims to achieve something desirable that could not be achieved if you put the legislation through the usual process of Parliamentary scrutiny.
This is one such case, because the Black Caps are about to leave for Zimbabwe, early next month. The law would not block the tour if the law took the several months that it would usually require to get through its three readings and its select committee scrutiny. Besides which, if the Government had started looking at this issue when we asked them to, back in April, there wouldn’t be any need for this great big rush now.
However, the greatest comeback to the Government’s “we really shouldn’t be doing this under urgency, that would be bad” argument is the case of Harry Duynhoven. Remember him? He’s the Labour MP who, back in 2003, adopted Dutch nationality, thus breaching the nationality requirements in the Electoral Act. To prevent Mr Duynhoven from losing his seat and facing a by-election, Labour decided to pass, under urgency, retrospective legislation which allowed him to stay in his seat.
Despite protestations of abuse of process from the Opposition, this law passed through all stages in Parliament within two days, with no select committee scrutiny, and with no public consultation. The Government saw a problem that needed fixing (one of its MPs was going to have to leave Parliament because of nationality rules he’d breached), and so came up with an unprecedented law change and rammed it through Parliament in two days, under urgency, to save Harry’s bacon. The punchline is that this law only passed, by 61 votes to 56, because the Greens supported it. (For those interested in this case, go and have a look at the Hansard urgent legislation.)
The parallels with the Zimbabwe case are striking. The Greens have perceived a problem (there’s about to be a cricket tour by our national representative team to Zimbabwe which will be exploited by an odious dictator for propaganda purposes), and have come up with an unprecedented law change that we want the Government to pass under urgency. Their appeal to process, as the Duynhoven case illustrates, is just another convenient excuse for not taking a tough decision, for not exhibiting moral leadership.
I have to add, too, that I consider standing up to the Mugabe regime by preventing a prestigious tour to his country as a much stronger reason for urgency than saving the hides of MPs (rumours abound that Harry wasn’t the only one infringing arcane nationality rules). Both pieces of legislation were time-sensitive, so the Greens supported urgency for both, but I have to say that the Zimbabwe legislation is a much more pressing issue for New Zealand’s public interest than was the fate or otherwise of individual MPs. If the Government was prepared to entertain urgency for saving one of its own, it certainly should be prepared to do the same for this law change, supported by the majority of the New Zealand public.
Published in Justice & Democracy | Parliament by frog on Tue, July 19th, 2005
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
and of course there’s all the other dodgy uses of urgency that this government has done, the ones where there were no real time constraints, only a desire from the government to bury an issue. Perhaps it would be helpful if you could list those as well frog.
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The Duynhoven legislation was dodgy.
The legislation was not arcane, it was 10 years old, and had been reviewed and amended even more recently.
And you could have, and should have, insisted at the very least that it apply ONLY to Harry Duynhoven.
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I hope the zimbabwe issue does not turn out to be like the corn issue last time round.
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As well as the Duynhoven legislation, this is the Government that forced through the abolition of Special Benefit by the Social Security (Working for Families) Amendment Act without public submissions and within 24 hours of the 2004 Budget, even though the abolition of Special Benefit does not happen until April 2006.
So if the inappropriateness of urgency is now their primary argument for opposing Rod’s Bill, it smacks of sheer hypocrisy.
I’m afraid I am cynical enough to believe that the Government wants the tour to continue, because it keeps foreign policy in the headlines. If they lose votes on Zimbabwe, they will only be lost to the Greens, and in terms of forming a Government this doesn’t matter at the end of the day. On the other hand, if tax cuts are in the headlines and the Government loses votes to the Nats on that issue, they are in trouble.
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wizban makes an interesting point. It’s not really clear how the tour or foreign policy as issues will affect things. A friend of mine is looking at giving their party vote to the Greens because of basic environmental issues. But they don’t support the anti-nuclear policy and are fairly hawkish when it comes to foreign policy.
I’m not convinced that it’s a good look for the Greens to be attacking Labour over the tour. Not many people are going to fall for this notion that the Greens are more concerned for human rights than Labour and it just looks like a rerun of the corngate saga.
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Well, to make things as clear as I can: the Zimbabwe tour is not a re-run of the GE debate or of Corngate. On GE in 2002, the Greens and Labour took diametrically opposed positions – the Greens made an extension of the moratorium a coalition deal-breaker, and Labour made a lifting of the moratorium a coalition deal-breaker.
On the Zimbabwe tour, we are not diametrically opposed, and the issue is one which will be resolved, one way or another, well before the election takes place. It will not enter into coalition negotiations because it will no longer be an issue, because the tour will have long since been called off or taken place.
The Govt’s position on Zimbabwe has, in many ways, been commendable. It has prevented the Zimbabwe cricket team from touring New Zealand in December, and it is trying to get Mugabe’s human rights abuses on to the agendas of the IMF, the UN, the ICC, and other international fora.
Actually, our only remaining point of disagreement is whether a law should be passed making the tour illegal. Labour has so far resisted our calls for that, though we remain eternally optimistic
Throughout the process of campaigning on this issue, as is envisaged in the cooperation agreement the Greens and Labour signed in 2002 (see here: http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/other5555.html), we have been in regular contact with the offices of the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Prime Minister, both in an effort to discuss the issues involved and to facilitate meetings between the political parties, and with Henry Olonga and Judith Todd.
If it appears that we’re at loggerheads over Zimbabwe in the same way that there was conflict between the parties over Corngate in the last election campaign, then you ought to go back and look at the media coverage of that episode. This is a different kettle of fish entirely, and our parties continue to work together cooperatively and cordially, nothwithstanding the many policy differences we have.
Also, if you think the Zimbabwe issue might suggest to some that the Greens cannot work with Labour, you should compare the words the Green Co-Leaders have used to describe Helen Clark (“a good Prime Minister” with the potential “to lead a great government”) in recent times with the words Winston Peters has used to describe Helen Clark and Don Brash. If you make tha comparison, you will see that Labour and the Greens have a comparatively rosy, harmonious relationship. Whether Winston Peters and Don Brash or Winston Peters and Helen Clark can work together should be a much more pressing concern for Kiwi voters.
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This close to the election Labour are not going to do anything unless they have multi-party parliamentary support. The Green’s problem here is not Labour, but the lack of response from National and NZF.
I agree with sock thief (for once) that it is not a good look to be attacking Labour on this one, when they are not the real problem.
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Logix –
Well, Labour is the problem in a sense. While I agree that Goff’s “abuse of process” argument is self-serving, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. (And having applauded the Greens for their principled and staunch opposition to the so-called ‘waka jumping’ legislation, I still think anyone who voted in favour of the Harry Duynhoven Job Protection And By-Election Avoidance Bill deserves a good hard slap in the head with a lead-plated volume of Hansard).
The select committee process is far from perfect as a check and balance on Parliament, and I’ve long wanted to see meaningful limits on the abuse of urgency motions. But the process of proper Parliamentary scrutiny can work and I don’t like seeing it being abridged or eliminated. Heavens knows I don’t want it being justified by opinion polls.
I say the real hard choice would be if the public who are supposedly overwhelmingly opposed to the tour – not the Government – had said they would put their hands up and share the burden of NZC breaking the contract to tour. But that’s never going to happen either…
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How about a one line piece of legislation
“It is unlawful to engage in sporting or cultural contact in another country as a representative of a national organisation when a resolution has been passed in parliament declaring a sporting or cultural boycott of that country. The penalty will be $1 per representative.”
Declaring an act to be unlawful does not restrict a persons ability to do it.
Not stopping at a stop light is unlawful, people do it. Simple.
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hey rantaz jeex last time i runs the reds light costs me lots more than $1
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