The regime introduced its appalling Conservation Amendment Bill, which allows widescale privatisation of the conservation estate, last week, and rammed it through its first reading yesterday. Submissions aren't open yet, but the good news is that the bill got the normal six months select committee consideration - meaning that it isn't due back until after the election. So, if you want to stop it, if you want to protect our taonga places, then one way of doing it is to vote out the regime.
Which illustrates the wider problem for the regime: they're out of time. Normally bills get six months at select committee, and anything less than four requires a vote and (time-consuming) debate. National hates democracy, and hates debate, so they've been tending to go for the minimum four months in an effort to limit both. But the calendar no longer works for that tactic. A bill passed through its first reading today with the minimum four months select committee time will be due back on 13 September. Normally there's a three working day wait before the report can be considered, giving just three sitting days (13 hours of sitting time) before the House rises. Each remaining stage - second reading, committee of the whole, and third reading - must occur on a separate sitting day, so they might just be able to squeeze it in under normal procedures. After today, it simply can't be done constitutionally.
What about unconstitutionally? This regime loves to shit on our democracy, loves to abbreviate select committee stages, loves to ram stuff through under urgency to limit debate. The last sitting weeks before an election tend to be wall-to-wall urgency as governments try and clear the order paper of all the bills they didn't get round to (the end of year "wash-up"). But the window is closing on that too. After next week, a bill given a minimum four month select committee phase won't be back in time to make it into an urgency motion at the end of the final sitting week. They can shorten the select committee stage - spending time on debate now, but because of recesses and scrutiny week, their window for a three month committee phase effectively closes on budget day. And anything less than that is simply a bad joke. Obviously, they can use all-stages urgency to ram stuff through, but the price of that is to absolutely delegitimise the law passed (as well as the state which passes it), and invite immediate repeal by the next government.
So, basically, their time is up. Any policy they offer up now is a hostage to the election. And if we don't like it, we can and should vote for a different government which will throw it in the bin.
