So, what's in the urgency motion? There's no Order Paper, but thanks to email, I have a rough list:
- Taxation (Urgent Measures and Annual Rates) Bill, all stages
- Two procedural motions to reinstate business and set up the ETS review committee
- 90 day bill all stages
- Bail bill all stages
- An education bill on national standards all stages
- A sentencing bill all stages
- Plus anything else they want.
According to the Herald, some of those bills which are to be passed through all stages haven't even been drafted yet. So, MPs will be debating bills they have not seen, and will not be able to give them proper scrutiny. Mistakes will be inevitable - which will no doubt mean more urgency later to fix them.
As I said earlier, this is no way to run a legislature, or a democracy. You have to go back to Douglas and Richardson to see this sort of abuse of the Parliamentary process. And if this is how National intends to run Parliament - as if the change to MMP had never happened, and this was still an FPP elected dictatorship - then I think it is incumbent on the opposition to take a page out of National's book, and make the House utterly unmanageable until the normal Parliamentary and democratic process is restored.
