So, having broken its promise to the nation, and dumped 85% of submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill in the trash, National's stooges on the Justice Committee have decided to end their "consideration" of the bill, and report back a full month early:
Labour says the Justice Select Committee is expected to report back on the Treaty Principles Bill on Friday - more than a month ahead of time.There is absolutely no reason for this haste. The original May deadline was set by the government, and could easily have been moved to allow for full analysis and consideration of the submissions. Especially as National has repeatedly said publicly that they will be voting the bill down at second reading. So I guess we can conclude from this that the fix is in, and Rimmer is going to get the racist referendum (and associated hate-crimes) he is thirsting for. And National is going to collude with him on this.Parliament set down a deadline of the 14 May, and a Cabinet minute shows the committee was set to consider it until 16 May.
But Labour's Justice spokesperson Duncan Webb - who had previously sought an extension to avoid thousands of public submissions being excluded - now says the timeline has been moved up.
"The committee finished more than a month ahead of the 14 May deadline set by Parliament with the report expected to be presented and available tomorrow (Friday)," he said.
Webb said the Committee had "rammed it through with outrageous haste" and the early report would exclude those thousands of submissions.
As I said earlier, this is not democracy. National's abuse here makes it clear that the entire parliamentary process is a sham and a fraud. It undermines the legitimacy of parliament, and of our democracy. And that is something no government should do. We need to vote these tyrants out at the first opportunity.