One thing that has become clear over the last month is that we have a far less transparent Parliament under National. First, there's their habit of abusing urgency to introduce legislation out of thin air to avoid public scrutiny. But beyond that, there's the regular day-to-day running of the place. Part of this is the Business Statement, an outline of the government's programme for the next sitting week given every Thursday afternoon by the Leader of the House. Under Labour, we were given the details: which readings of which bills on which days. Under National, we get crap like this:
When the House resumes on Tuesday, 10 March, the Government intends to make progress on Government Orders of the Day with other bills to be introduced during the week.This is an unusually informative business statement for National. Their last one said simply that "the Government will make progress with the bills on the Order Paper". He might as well have stood up there and blown a raspberry.The second reading of the Taxation (Business Tax Measures) Bill will be taken on Thursday, 12 March, provided the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee is able to report back on Monday, 9 March.
This doesn't affect the parties - they're all represented on the Business Committee, so they know what is coming down the pipeline. Instead, it affects the people who are meant to keep an eye on what our elected representatives are doing: the media and the public. In a democracy, anything less than full transparency can only be construed as a deliberate attempt to avoid accountability. And we should not tolerate it.
