Stealing Member's Day

Today is a Member's Day, but instead of regular business, the government is stealing it in order to pass a bill under all-stages urgency to allow people to get pissed at the RSA on Anzac Day.

The government has known about this "problem" for a long time - at least since December 2015 when the bill was drawn from the ballot. They could have adopted the bill and passed it at any time. Instead, they're stealing member's time to do it, having let themselves run up against a purely self-imposed "deadline".

And that's how National legislates: ad-hoc, on the run, and under all-stages urgency. And then we wonder why our laws are so shit.

Conveniently, this also means that the government will be able to avoid a member's bill ballot again - and with the Keep Kiwibank and Official Information (Parliamentary Undersecretaries) bills due out of select committee next week, delay one by another couple of months.