Wednesday, August 27, 2008



Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day, and it should finally see the passage of Sue Bradford's Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill. As Bradford points out, this will be a big achievement - only three other member's bills have been passed by Parliament this term, and two of them (section 59 and the abolition of youth rates) were from her (the other was from her Green party colleague Sue Kedgley).

However, that old warning about not counting preferred animal species may apply - there's two local bills up, and the last ten minutes of the committee stage of the Waste Minimisation Bill has been moved forward, so there's plenty of opportunity for a filibuster. And that's before we even get into the antics in the House in Question Time today.

There are now at most two more member's days remaining in the Parliamentary term - September 10 and possibly October 1. So if things today go as planned, then we will likely see the waste bill passed into law next month, and maybe, just maybe, Darien Fenton's Minimum Wage and Remuneration Amendment Bill will make it through without needing to be adopted as a government bill. Assuming, of course, that Winston's ego doesn't push us into an early election...