Saved by the fillibuster

Labour and the Greens successfully fillibustered John Key's spy bill yesterday, delaying its passage by at least two weeks. Good. But while two extra weeks of privacy is good, the goal must be to kill the bill. So the question now is what we do with those two weeks.

The government's majority on this bill is a single vote. We therefore need to either persuade one of their support parties to support the people of New Zealand instead of the spies, or persuade a National backbencher to cross the floor to protect our rights. Both are huge asks, and are only going to happen with a huge amount of pressure. Our job has to be to create that pressure. Contact details for National MPs are here, and that looks like a good place to start. If you live in a National electorate, email or write to your MP about the bill and make it clear that your vote depends on theirs. We only need to persuade one of them that it is political suicide to continue to back it.

(Hopefully there will be a further round of public protests too, but that's beyond my skill-set)

We've got two weeks. Let's get to work.