Thursday, February 23, 2006



Today's ballot

My request for a spy in Parliament has borne fruit, and several people have emailed me a copy of today's ballot. And there's some interesting-looking bills on it. For example:

  • Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill (Dr Jackie Blue)
  • Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Informed Consent) Amendment Bill (Gordon Copeland)
  • Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill (Barbara Stewart)

There's plenty more as well, and I'll be emailing MPs to try and get details.

As for the odds, there are 31 bills this time, and slightly under half of them (15) from National. The Greens and NZFirst have again used their full allocations (6 each). There is nothing from ACT, and nothing from the Maori Party. I guss they're still working on things. But the biggest underutilisation of the resource has to be Labour's, with only three Labour MPs putting bills forward. While they get to advance legislation through being the government, surely more of them have pet projects they want to advance? And if they don't, I can give them a few...

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