Last month, the Speaker of the House effectively ruled [PDF] that Ministers can lie with impunity in Question Time, as in order to mislead the House, a statement must be made in "a situation of some formality".
On 27 August, in his weekly Business Statement, Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee said:
Wednesday 9 September is set down to be a Members’ day.As we've just seen, there was no Member's day. The government went straight into urgency after Question Time on Tuesday afternoon, and ate all of Wednesday ramming through its RMA amendments in minimum time so as to reduce public debate and adverse media coverage - something they had clearly been plotting all along. So, a question: is this formal enough, and did Brownlee mislead the House?
Correction: Corrected date of Business Statement. I'd forgotten last week was a recess...
