I wonder whether he had thought through the implications for democracy of preventing one of the major newspapers in New Zealand from working in Parliament.

Aside from being heavy-handed, all these restrictions on what people can and cannot photograph in Parliament look a bit precious, and have the effect, intended or not, of further divorcing ordinary people from Parliament.

Instead of being encouraged to turn up to Parliament and view it as ‘their place’ all these rules, and the sometimes officious way people sitting in the Gallery are treated, alienate people and make Parliament feel like some other planet, rather than ‘their place’.

I note that MPs in the UK Parliament have been debating similar concerns – namely, that all the tightening of security and rules around visiting their Parliament are making Parliament seem ever more divorced from ordinary people.

As well as undermining freedom of expression in the media, I fear the Speakers ruling could have a similar effect here.

The problem with urgency is that it often means that laws don’t receive the kind of scrutiny they should. So it means you get laws with mistakes and laws that do bad things without ever giving the people a chance to influence them.

To be fair, sometimes urgency is just extending the sitting time of parliament just to get through a backlog but using normal processes. Nonetheless, the amount of time parliament spends in urgency can give some indication of how much the governing parties are trying to subvert the usual checks and balances of parliament.

It is great to see Russel’s concerns now being echoed by others in the political arena and the media.  Here’s Labour MP Grant Robertson, last week:

1. By-passing the select committee process should be something that is done in only the most exceptional circumstances. It may be that a different kind of urgency motion should be required for that, with perhaps 75% of the House having to agree.

2. We should investigate whether there is a way of extending the sitting hours of the House in a way that does not compromise the integrity or quality of the legislative process. One suggestion that has been floating around is to allow for the Committee of the Whole House to sit on Wednesday and Thursday mornings when the relevant Select Committee is not sitting. I am sure there will be other suggestions.

And National aligned blogger David Farrar:

1. That standing orders be changed so that a bill can bypass select committee stage only with approval of the Speaker (as is needed for extraordinary urgency).
2. That standing orders be changed so that question time automatically carries on, even if the House is in urgency
3. That the number of sitting weeks be increased, hence reducing the need for so much urgency, from 31 to 33 by reducing the number of two week recesses from five to three.
4. That standing orders be amended to distinguish between “extended sitting hours” which would merely extend the sitting hours on Wednesday and/or Thursday and full urgency (where you specify particular bills, and the House keeps going until they are disposed of)

Today, the NZ Herald joins in:

The copyright law is an especially curious case. It was set aside after being reported back from a select committee last November, and did not seem a pressing matter. All the Government’s rush has done is spread apprehension. A more considered approach would have avoided this. Likewise, there seemed little reason for urgency for the latest Christchurch legislation, other than to establish the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. The Government had already granted itself wide-ranging emergency powers under law passed after the first earthquake.

Legislation rushed though in this manner has a much reduced chance of being good law. When the select committee stage is bypassed, a valuable chance to iron out problems is removed and opposing viewpoints are denied due consideration. A glaring example of this was the law change introducing national standards in schools.

Well done, Russel, for getting this discussion started.  All we need now is for National to take notice of your concerns. Maybe that will happen now some of their supporters are beginning to share them.

The Dalai Lama’s 2007 NZ visit included a trip up to the Green caucus

I was a little disappointed to read Brian Rudman’s column this week in the New Zealand Herald about the upcoming visit of the Dalai Lama.  In Mr Rudman’s opinion our Prime Minister shouldn’t meet with the Dalai Lama when it could upset the Chinese Government.

Cheeking a non-ally like China over an issue as esoteric as Tibet seems suicidal.

We can’t even persuade or bully our tiny near-neighbours like Fiji to restore democracy, or Tonga to institute it, so why risk our livelihood taunting the elephant with genuinely big tusks?

Now earlier this month Tonga did take some very important steps in regard to its progress on the road to democracy so perhaps Brian needs to keep up with the play on this issue.

As to comparing Fiji and China – well neither countries are democracies and both have issues with human rights. 

New Zealand should as a principled independent country do its utmost to advance globally a respect for human rights.  We should surely be engaging in constructive talks with both Fiji and China when the opportunity arises to press for progressive reforms and to raise the plight of human rights.

 It wasn’t just me getting a little peeved by Brian’s miss-directed missive on the Dalai Lama.  Liam Hehir of Palmerston North felt so incensed by the cavalier way Tibet had been reduced to an ‘esoteric issue’ he dropped the Herald a line.  Personally I think Liam hits the nail on the head with his criticism of the basic moral flaw in Brian Rudman’s opinion piece.

If Tibet is an irrelevancy then what are we? We are a small,isolated and weak like Tibet.  Were the same fate to befall us, would our cause perish under Mr Rudman’s calculus?

 Meeting the Dalai Lama may seem a futile gesture, but as the English Philosopher Edmund Burke noted:

 “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because  he could only do a little.”

According to NZ Herald Columnist Fran O’Sullivan the issue of a referendum on MMP was discussed at cabinet on Monday 31 August 2009. 

 Yesterday Ms O’Sullivan informed Newstalk ZB drive time host Larry Williams of how this information was conveyed to her – presumably by Mr Key – and how the parliamentary press gallery was kept in the dark.

 Larry Williams: You wrote about this a week ago the MMP [referendum] – well it looks like it’s going to happen.

 Fran O ‘Sullivan: Oh yes I did.  I don’t usually get it that wrong.  It was very much on the table at last week’s cabinet though they never made an announcement of it in the post-cabinet press conference but it [the referendum] was let drop at a business function I was at during the week so I decided to put it in the public domain.

What is interesting, at least to this frog, is who it was in the media that was fed the information about the referendum.  Rather than being dispersed to the press gallery it was selectively leaked at a business function.  And was this information given to a defender of the status quo? Hell no.  Here’s how Ms O’ Sullivan conveyed her scoop to readers of the Weekend Herald.

 Gamesmanship will again come into calculations on the sequencing of the MMP referendum.

Businessman Peter Shirtcliffe has been campaigning for “enough intellectual and organisational horsepower” to be applied so a single stage definitive referendum could be held next year, then applied at the 2011 election.

Frankly, Key should adopt Shirtcliffe’s timetable. If past polling is anything to go by, many Kiwis would vote MMP down if given the chance.

Fighting the next election on an electoral system – even First Past the Post – which gave more power to the major party to implement sensible policies would do more to even the gap with Australia than endless horsetrading.

 And what sensible policies would Ms O’Sullivan like implanted? Time to go back to Larry Williams drive time show where Ms O’Sullivan explains what MMP has stopped happening for the last decade or so – privatisation.

…various single issue or smaller parties will be able to point to wins they have had through [their] influence on the major parties that happens to be in power.  But there are also some big things that aren’t happening – there are things from a business perspective.  No-one can talk about privatisation…

No-one can talk about privatisation! – well that’s probably because National took privatisation off the agenda last year fearing that it would remind everyone of the 1990s and lose them the 2008 election.  However it looks like it is back to the 1990s when it comes to electoral reform.  Ms O’Sullivan explains just where the push for getting rid of MMP is coming from.

Larry Williams: Are you expecting vigorous debate on it – we had Peter Shirtcliffe last time – [is he] still going to be in there?

 Fran O’Sullivan: Yes Peter and Graham Hunt have teamed up again to push this one – they are definitely in there. And Peter has been saying a few words behind the scenes…

Frog wants to know who Mr Shirtcliffe has been having a few words and why the once valiant defender of First Past the Post is now floating the idea of a  Supplementary Member system – the exact same system John Key favours and a system that will lead to smaller parties being decimated.

Whoever Mr Shirtcliffe was chatting to about the alleged evils of MMP it probably wasn’t  Bill English.  In 2007 Mr English told the media a National-controlled government would NOT hold a referendum on MMP.  By 2008 with National riding high in the polls holding a referendum became National party policy and Mr English’s view was – according to Mr Key –  a “personal one”.

Image crafted by
Lyndon Hood

This morning I just about choked on my breakfast of lilies and insects as I was reading the New Zealand Herald (online version). The Herald had an article implying that the Ports Of Auckland chairman Gary Judd thought now – as in right in the middle of an economic recession – was the right time to consider privatising the Ports of Auckland.

This news that an economic recession was the right time to get rid of any publicly owned company seemed pretty darn crazy. To me it seemed like the kind of lunacy practiced by those on the economic fringe – say Richard Prebble, Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas.

Out came the Green Party rightfully concerned that a fire-sale was imminent. The blogosphere was also bemused at the economic idiocy.

“This simply makes no sense. To point out the blindingly obvious, the people of Auckland will not get a good price for their asset by selling it in the middle of a recession. Instead, they’ll get screwed, while the buyer laughs all the way to the bank,” wrote the mysterious Mr No Right Turn.

Some time later in the day I was contacted by Mr Judd’s PR person. There were claims of a media beat-up. I was even sent a letter – which I liked as it was a good source of recyclable protein. Lo and behold when I went to check out the Herald story from this morning it had been updated.

I also understand that Mr Judd may want some sort of acknowledgement in tomorrows’ Herald regarding the fact he is adamant he never called for Auckland’s port to be sold and didn’t suggest that now was the right time for the Ports of Auckland’s privatisation.

I reckon Mr Judd must have been pretty mad at the Herald for making him look like the kind of crazed economic vandal that would flog off a vital piece of economic infrastructure in the midst of a recession. There’s a gang devoted to that sort of hooliganism – the ACT Party – and I hear they meet every second Thursday at the St Mary’s Bay phone booth.

For the last week or so since the NZAID shake-up story broke in the NZ Herald Mr McCully has been flitting around Europe. During the time Mr McCully was probably scoffing hors d’ouvres in Paris it has come to light that a $1.95 million a year Pacific aid programme which supports villages across the Pacific in areas like natural resource management has been canned.

While programs devoted to natural resource management get the chop the Government has found millions of dollars to keep Pacific tourism links going – links which the Prime Minister told journalists earlier this week could very well be coming from NZAID’s already tight budget. Now, I enjoy a pacific blue-lagoon-style holiday just like the next amphibian, and maybe we should be assisting our Pacific pals’ tourism industries – but should NZAID’s budget be going to Air New Zealand. This seems a little stingy to this frog and has led our Green Party MP Dr Kennedy Graham to call for some answers from the Minister.

In these tough economic times our Foreign Minister should perhaps heed the advice of the Christian World Service and keep up our commitment to the world’s poorest. This advice also comes from an organisation Mr McCully’s pals from the 1990s were always willing to follow the – International Monetary Fund.