Friday, October 08, 2004



Democratic transparency II

Following my discussion with Peter Brown, I emailed the leaders of National and United Future asking them to publicise their MP's voting records on the HART bill:

I was shocked to read Peter Brown's press release about the attempts of certain parties to avoid democratic accountability for their votes during the committee stage debate on the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill recently (viewable at http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/PA0410/S00132.htm). I was so shocked that I called him in order to find out which parties had attempted to hide their votes in this manner. He named three parties: National, United Future, and "maybe ACT".

In order to avoid any implication that members of your party are attempting to evade democratic oversight of their voting records, I'd hope that you will come clean and name those MPs voting for and against the bill in each vote.

(Rodney Hide got a slightly different version).

It will be interesting to see what (if any) response I receive.

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