The ballot for private member's bills has been held, and according to my spies, the following bills have been drawn:
- Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill (Barbara Stewart)
- Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill (Wayne Mapp)
The former is a desperate attempt to roll back the clock to the pre-MMP days when Parliament was smaller, a fixation shared mostly by the old and which I've never been able to understand. The latter is doomed from the start. National needs the support of either the Maori Party or the Greens to pass legislation, and given their strong positions on labour issues, I can't imagine either supporting a bill which will make workers even more vulnerable and casualised than they are at present.
The bills will have their first reading on the next Member's Day, in two three weeks' time.
Correction: Corrected time of next Member's Day.
I think we need more MPs, not less. The trouble with only having 120 is that the pool of talent to recruit Ministers from is quite small - leading to a lack of effective political oversight and ministries effectively being run by their permanent staff.
ReplyDeleteMost of the problems government has had over the last few years stem from poor execution not bad policy, and it strikes me that if the government had a better grip it would be a lot more popular.
Of course it make sense for an opposition party to want government policy to be badly executed - especially if they don't really believe they'll ever be in government themselves.