The ballot for private member’s bills
June 18th, 2009 at 11:06 am by David FarrarThe Office of the Clerk is doing a ballot at midday to randomly select two private member’s bills from 24 put forward. The list is:
|
1. |
Boscawen |
John |
Crimes (Reasonable Parental Control and Correction) Amendment Bill |
|
2. |
Bradford |
Sue |
Citizens Initiated Referenda (Wording of Questions) Amendment Bill |
|
3. |
Chauvel |
Charles |
Credit Reforms (Responsible Lending) Bill |
|
4. |
Delahunty |
Catherine |
Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill |
|
5. |
Douglas |
Hon Sir Roger |
Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill |
|
6. |
Fenton |
Darien |
Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill |
|
7. |
Fitzsimons |
Jeanette |
Sustainable Biofuel Bill |
|
8. |
Flavell |
Te Ururoa |
Education (Kōhanga Reo, Kura Kaupapa Māori, and Early Childhood Standards) Amendment Bill |
|
9. |
Garrett |
David |
Crimes (Self-Defence) Amendment Bill |
|
10. |
Gilmore |
Aaron |
Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance (Break Fees Disclosure) Amendment Bill |
|
11. |
Graham |
Dr Kennedy |
International Non-Aggression and the Lawful Use of Force Bill |
|
12. |
Hague |
Kevin |
Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill |
|
13. |
Katene |
Rahui |
Te Rā o Mātāriki Bill/Mātāriki Day Bill |
|
14. |
Kedgley |
Sue |
Customs and Excise (Cruelty to Animals) Amendment Bill |
|
15. |
Lees-Galloway |
Iain |
Smoke-free Environments (Removing Tobacco Displays) Amendment Bill |
|
16. |
Locke |
Keith |
Head of State Referenda Bill |
|
17. |
McClay |
Todd |
Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Sunday Local Choice) Amendment Bill |
|
18. |
Moroney |
Sue |
Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Six Months Paid Leave) Amendment |
|
19. |
Norman |
Dr Russel |
Local Electoral Amendment Bill |
|
20. |
Parker |
Hon David |
Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Change of Date for Full Funding) Amendment Bill |
|
21. |
Ririnui |
Hon Mita |
Electoral (Entrenchment of Māori Representation) Amendment Bill |
|
22. |
Street |
Hon Maryan |
Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill |
|
23. |
Turei |
Metiria |
Marine Animals Protection Law Reform Bill |
|
24. |
Twyford |
Phil |
Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill |
Only two National MPs have bills in the ballot. All three ACT backbenchers have a bill, as do all nine Green MPs. Maori Party has two, and Labour has eight.
Pardon the formatting – it is a cut and paste.
UPDATE: The luck of the Greens continues. Both draws picked a Green bill – Jeanette Fitzsimons’ Sustainable Biofuel Bill and Catherine Delahunty’s Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bil.e
June 18th, 2009 at 11:09 am
David exactly how does the ballot work?
[DPF: I think it is each bill has a number, and numbered balls are put into a box or hat and pulled out]
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Oh please let one of them be Catherine Delahunty’s. She might sing it to parliament rather than read it robotically, as is the custom.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 11:12 am
national…
the party of independant thinkers…eh..?
(heh..!)
..and how about those greens..?..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am
are you able to view the bills online? like the hansard website? Some of these look fascinating. Does anyone know what Roger Douglas and David Garrett’s ones are about? Voluntary student union membership? and an amendment to the self defence laws?
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 11:36 am
More do-good social engineering from no-hoper MPs.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 11:42 am
nickb said: …are you able to view the bills online?
I think that’s up to the MPs as to whether they publish them on their Party websites. They don’t appear on the Parliamentary site unless they are actually drawn. Jeanette Fitzsimons’ is here and Sue Bradford’s is here.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Crimes (Self-Defence) Amendment Bill – what does Garrett want changed here?
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
A little gloat: Street’s Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill is from the Progressive Bills Project.
I am as usual endeavouring to get copies of all these bills so I can do an “In the Ballot” on them.
[DPF: It would be nice if the Parliamentary website listed them all, but I guess they don't regard them as proper Bills until they get drawn]
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Jeanette and Delahunty win. The Green ballot mojo strikes again!
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
cool thanks toad
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
So which Biofuel company does Jeanette have shares in now ?
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
IdiotSavant said: Jeanette and Delahunty win. The Green ballot mojo strikes again!
And with John Key considering the Government adopting Sue Bradford’s one to clean up referenda wording, the Greens could have three from today’s ballot running.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Sue Bradford now wants to give the speaker the right to toss out a referendum (under the guise of she doesn’t like its wording). This woman is a bigger threat to the New Zealand people than the Japanese Empire ever was.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
At first glance it would seem pretty simple to just stuff the ballot with dozens of one’s own party’s Bills so as to increase the chance of being picked – what’s stopping a party doing this? Maybe they need to informally garner support first?
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Wrong Murray, about everything! Read the Bill.
It is the Clerk of the House of Representatives (not the Speaker) who confirms the wording under the current Act. And the Bill Bradford is proposing doesn’t permit a referendum to be “tossed out” by the Clerk, but allows the Clerk to refer poorly worded ones back to be reworded in a manner that is not ambiguous, complex, leading, or misleading.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
How much time and money do the bastards now waste debating these two bills when the reality is that they have NO chance of ever being passed?
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
stephen said: At first glance it would seem pretty simple to just stuff the ballot with dozens of one’s own party’s Bills so as to increase the chance of being picked…
No, each MP can have only one Bill in the ballot. So the most the Greens could have is 9 (which they did have in this ballot). It does reveal something about MPs from Labour and National though – that many of them either don’t care enough about anything to draft one or are too lazy to bother drafting one.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Again Toad is spinning Bradford’s bullshit.
Comrade Bradford wants to stop democracy, she is petrified that her little “victory” and two fingered salute to the people of NZ in the form of the anti smacking bill will be overturned.
Mind you, Bradford has lied consistently about this bill from day one so I suppose that Toad is only continuing that line.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
tossed out, tossed back in perpetuity. Really GOOD fucking grasp you commie have of democracy toad.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
big bruv,
Bradford’s proposed bill has no effect on the outcome of this current referendum.
Can you please qualify what ‘stopping democracy’ entails?
I read the bill Toad linked to, and I think it seemed pretty sensible – a simple improvement to ensure clarification of questions submitted to the clerk of the house. I actually see there to be a lot of benefit in this. It means we can start debating the real issues in a referendum, and not their semantics.
You may not agree with Bradfords politics (I don’t) or her motives behind this bill (which are clear), but calling it an attempt to stop democracy sounds just plain hysterical.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Just read the Fitzimmons bill.
Vote:As it happens I agree with the philosophy behind it but defining the term “sustainable biofuel” so it matches the sustainablity principles in the bill as it stands will be a very difficult exercise for the draughter to undertake.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
No, each MP can have only one Bill in the ballot. So the most the Greens could have is 9 (which they did have in this ballot). It does reveal something about MPs from Labour and National though – that many of them either don’t care enough about anything to draft one or are too lazy to bother drafting one.
Yes, that would appear to be revealing. Sure they’re busy, but surely they’d prefer to spend time debating their own Bills rather than someone else’s..
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Stephen: with National, they’re in government, so I can understand why they’d prefer to simply lobby the Minister rather than take a chance in the ballot. As for Labour, I’m hoping they’ll make a more impressive showing in the next ballot.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Goff forgot to send the rest through – too busy contemplating the Choundry affair…
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Boy not much there to give anyone a hard-on. Looks like more of the same old shit from the commies and two bobs, trying to peddle their snake oil. 5 and 1 look like they could actually have some substance but the rest can be shredded.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Ta IS. Street’s one sounded lovely actually, if a little tricky.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Private members bills are an important component to political participation in Parliament. It allows bills to be considered from outside the acting government.
Even if they are not passed it helps add to the legislative debate on the topic and the construction of future legislation regarding the topic.
I would personally like to see the Sustainable Biofuels Bill passed, as it holds principles similar to the amendment to the Biofuel Act (since repealed) put forward last year. Effectively asking the question – Why bother making Biofuels if they are not sustainable?
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I just set up the website http://www.nzmembersbills.wordpress.com to follow the ballot. It will use resources from here, and No right Turn, who hasn’t done much of his usual “in the Ballot” posts recently.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
No right Turn, who hasn’t done much of his usual “in the Ballot” posts recently.
That’s because there hasn’t been a ballot in 18 months.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
What exactly would “unsustainable biofuel” be? The very term biofuel refers to the fact it comes from living sources – canola, sugar cane, tallow and others.
Would an unsustainable biofuel be made from Kakapo, Chatham Island robin, Loch Ness Monsters?
And Delahunty’s bill demanding that imported timber products be produced from sustainable logging….does that mean a piece of furniture made from the last tree in the world would be banned from New Zealand?
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Delahunty’s bill basically adopts an ‘guilty until proven innocent’ approach to timber imports. In effect, it denies that sovereign states (generally) have the competence to determine if their exports are ‘legal’ and ‘sustainable’. The rights to export timber products would be given to approved international certification bodies (perhaps like the FSC).
This would also be a unilateral action that could be subject to WTO sanction (we are after all, going to say to other sovereign states that they are too feckin’ stupid to be trusted with their own resources, so it’s up to the newest colonial power in the globe to take charge- the Green movement- to do that for them).
Note that we have agreed to a number of international environmental treaties (like the CBD) promising that we would only undertake multilateral action for environmental approval. Likewise we are eschewing other international multilateral approaches like CITES. Of course, CITES only requires a non-detriment standard rather than positive proof of sustainability, hence is less onerous to developing countries. The cost for sustainable forestry enterprises in developing countries to demonstrate that they are in fact, sustainable, can be a major financial and expertise hurdle. By analogy, the ongoing efforts to show that the CAMPFIRE programme was sustainable in Zimbabwe, went a long way to killing off the success of these initiatives.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
The bills are there http://blog.greens.org.nz/2009/06/18/2-out-of-2-the-members-ballot-goes-green/
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
In effect, it denies that sovereign states (generally) have the competence to determine if their exports are ‘legal’ and ’sustainable’.
I haven’t read the Bill myself, but I suspect Delahunty would say ‘it denies that sovereign states (generally) have the *inclination* to determine if their exports are ‘legal’ and ‘sustainable’.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Quite possibly.
The point however, is that for whatever reason, the plan is to remove resource-rights from our trading partners and gift them to approved certification bodies. And the Delahunty plan is to do so in a way that flies in the face of most of the recent international environmental treaties we’ve signed up to.
Vote:June 18th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Agree with Murray. Not keen to see any legislation emanating from Ms Bradford in the foreseeable future. I just simply do not trust her motives nor do I think she is a good representative of the people.
As an unelected list MP she represents the negative side of MMP. She would never have been admitted to Parliament under FPP.
Vote:June 19th, 2009 at 9:03 am
@Alex M – as far as I can see (on a 2 second read I admit) the main purpose of the Fitzsimmons bill is to criminalise the selling of biofuels unless that are registered as “sustainable”. It seems selling petrol would still be ok though. I wasn’t sure that the problems in New Zealand were caused by too few crimes.
Vote:June 19th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I would have liked to have seen Sir. Roger Douglas’s bill drawn…would be good to see the pollies debating VSM!
Vote:June 21st, 2009 at 6:38 am
Basically Garretts bill will allow people to defend themselves from scum by any means nessessary and not worry about the law trying them as crims..
Its about to propel ACT into the heights of popularity with Mr and Mrs NZ…..
Watch the crim lovers on the left howl like bitches over this.
Vote: