Oops

Yesterday, I blogged about Parliament's extreme use of urgency to pass a pandemic-related tax bill with only one debate and no select committee or committee stage. As I noted, this increased the chances of an error slipping through, which might then need to be fixed later. And it turns out that's exactly what happened: just now, the Finance Minister explained at one o'clock Ashley that the wrong version of the bill had been tabled by the Parliamentary Counsel's Office, meaning that they had passed a small-business loan scheme before they were planning to. Oops.

Its something the government was planning to do anyway, so as mistakes go, its not that serious, and it doesn't need fixing. But it highlights the dangers of this sort of abuse of the Parliamentary process. It also highlights that MP's don't bother to actually read the legislation they're voting on, and as a result can end up passing something unintentionally. And that's rather disturbing. Again, it would be nice if politicians actually did their jobs properly. But apparently that's just too much to expect.