A failure of duty
September 29th, 2011 at 10:05 am by David FarrarBills that come before Parliament are of four types. They are:
- a Government bill—a bill dealing with a matter of public policy introduced by a Minister
- a Member’s bill—a bill dealing with a matter of public policy introduced by a member who is not a Minister
- a local bill—a bill promoted by a local authority, which affects a particular locality only
- a private bill—a bill promoted by a person or body of persons (whether incorporated or not) for the particular interest or benefit of that person or body of persons
As you can see a private bill is for the benefit of a person or body of persons. A number of organisations in New Zealand have enabling legislation such as the Scout Association. Another example is the Royal Society of New Zealand – they needed their 1997 legislation updated to incorporate the humanities in their objects and make some governance changes.
Only an MP can introduce a bill into Parliament so a private body needs to find an MP to agree to promote their bill and steer it through the House. They will often ask the local MP, but it can be any MP. And if the MP agrees, they have basically a duty of care to that organisation to use their best efforts to get that law changed. This is normally very easy, as these changes are rarely controversial.
The Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill was introduced in September 2010. It should have passed into law in early 2011. but instead it remains stuck on committee stage and now can not pass before the election.
And the primary reason for this is the bill’s own sponsor, Grant Robertson, deliberately filibustered his own bill and used it as a weapon to try and stop the VSM bill from passing. Grant failed of course, but failed twice. He failed to stop the VSM bill from passing and failed to pass the Royal Society Bill because he spent months and months filibustering his own bill.
Grant will no doubt blame Heather Roy for moving that progress be reported on his bill, cutting off debate on it. But she only did this after months and months of Grant filibustering his own legislation. Grant could have had the bill passed by May. Even if it completed committee stage last night, it wouldn’t have been able under standing orders to have its third reading.
Now imagine how pissed off you would be if you were the Royal Society of NZ? Your own local MP has effectively fucked you over by using your bill as a political weapon in his ideological war against freedom of choice for students.
If you were another private organisation needing a private bill, would you go to Grant to promote it? You’d have to be mad to do so, not knowing whether it will be used as an effective hostage against other bills further down the order paper.
The Royal Society I imagine has no views on VSM. It is a shame they were an innocent casualty of Labour’s war against it.
They were not the only casualty. Labour MP Sue Moroney complained on Twitter (screen shot via Whale) that her bill extending paid parental leave never got debated. Well that was because of her colleagues filibustering. The filibustering meant there has been no ballots for bills for most of 2011. Labour managed to block all their own members bills, and all the Green ones also.
Related posts:
- Filibustering & Urgency
- National and GST
- Labour’s $400,000 an hour filibuster
- Parliament 29 February 2012
September 29th, 2011 at 10:16 am
Yawn. Sick of hearing about how useless Labour are. Let’s ridicule some other losers for a change.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 10:17 am
Labour
Vote:Trying to retain its fully funded training ground with no compassion towards the poor sops who fund it.
Hope they get there just deserts. A decade or more as the opposition and only returning to power as the miner partner in a green labour coalition.
September 29th, 2011 at 10:24 am
‘the miner partner in a green labour coalition.’
Another impossibility for Labour I suspect.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 10:28 am
Sure looks that way johnboy, all the miners will be off to Oz:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/well-need-170000-workers-says-bhp-20110928-1kxf7.html
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 10:30 am
Or the are digging them self’s a big hole -miner
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 10:31 am
They haven’t learned to stop digging yet I guess.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 10:34 am
own GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 10:35 am
Anyway weren’t you touting Grant Robertson as a future leader of Liarbour not so long ago David?
Seems he has a long way to go yet even to reach the wise, dignified status of the current incumbent.
[DPF: I have a very healthy respect for Grant and his abilities. In this case I think he showed poor judgement in fillibustering his own bill]
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 11:05 am
Grant Robertson could always seek leave of the House to have Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill pass through all remaining stages: but this would require at least a tacit admission that his filibustering was inappropriate. Unlikely to happen.
Of course, Grant is not the only MP to use Stranding Orders to frustrate his political opponents. Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi’s Military Manoeuvres Act Repeal Bill is nothing but a shameless waste of Parliament’s resources, which was only done to take up one of the slots allocated to member’s bills, thus preventing another member from promoting a bill that the government didn’t want to see introduced.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 11:11 am
I noted a number of left-wingers on the VSM thread yesterday who were mocking the whole thing as being a minor kerfuffle, with various references to all the more important stuff the government (and voters) should be thinking about and dealing with.
Which raised to me the question as to why the premier left-wing party in NZ chose to fight this down to the last unbroken bone? Are there deeper questions and issues here than these voters and commentators are willing to consider? Or is it that this really is a crucial, perhaps even vital, aspect to the NZ left-wing?
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 11:12 am
“Hope they get there just deserts.”
Definitely. The Sahara or Gobi would do fine.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 11:27 am
Grant – (and we know you read this blog especially where it involves your good self,
will you apologise to your fellow MPs (especially Sue M who does seem quite grumpy) admit you got it wrong, and also apologise to the Royal society for shafting them.
Acknowledge that you have failed on so many counts, and even I suspect the students who could have had a negotiated outcome if you had not been so pig headed. For us on the right there is a delicious irony in the way Labour have failed, and at the same time shot themselves.
Of course you say you will reintroduce compulsion for students (good luck there) but you also know and regret that 2011 is lost because your leader prefers to play darts in a pub than pay attention to parliament (or valedictory speeches), but Labour will also lose in 2014 and your next best chance will be 2017. By this time freedom of association will be well embedded, student unions would have re-organised themselves and there will be no need or desire for compulsion.
You lost, the righties won – eat that. Move on
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 11:31 am
The royal society would be made up of a considerable number of academics. I think they will have very strong views on the VSM law especially where it interferes with resouces for students learning.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 11:36 am
It’ll be a shame if this tosser Robertson wins Wellington Central in November
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 11:40 am
You’d think that an electorate MP (in deference to a List MP) would accept that they have an obligation to the very constituents who voted them into office, but in this case Robertson has done them a total disservice by filibustering in order to (try and) prevent the VSM Legislation being passed. And that worked a treat, didn’t it?
Robertson has clearly shot himself in the foot. The Royal Society of New Zealand have every right to be pissed off.
Just add them to the list…..
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Some private bills are required because of the history surrounding an organisation. For example an Independent School can be set up without recourse to a private bill. However the rudimentary legislative framework of the 19th century meant that it was expedient to set up institutions via ordinances enacted by Provincial Councils. Christ’s College is a prime example and its associated legislation needs tweaking from time to time as it was in the early 2000′s, and at that time one MP expressed the view that it was a waste of Parliament’s time.
Labour treated Nick Smith’s Institution of Professional Engineers of NZ private bill (also in the early 2000′s) a bit unkindly. In fairness to Labour it treated it as a quasi Government bill because it modernised professional regulation and standards and also reformed a statutory body, but the Bill was confined to being discussed on Wednesdays and progress was slow. This started to have a serious impact on timing of reforms of the Institution and the associated statutory body the (then) Engineers Registration Board. It was a pity Labour did not give it some Government bill time. Apart from this, the introduction and passage of the Bill was a credit to all involved. It was a particular credit to Nick that he could shepherd such a Bill through the House in the way he did – it was helped as there was nothing ‘political’ in it.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
To Quote
“georgebolwing (372) Says:
September 29th, 2011 at 11:05 am
Grant Robertson could always seek leave of the House to have Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill pass through all remaining stages: but this would require at least a tacit admission that his filibustering was inappropriate. Unlikely to happen.”
This in fact did happen yesterday. Grant asked for leave of the house but some person objected.
Any idea who objected?
[DPF: If leave had been granted, then Grant could have filibustered the bill, so that there was not enough time for VSM's third reading.]
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Is labour well on thew road to third place, or is it just wishful thinking on my part?
cheers
David Prosser
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
“This in fact did happen yesterday. Grant asked for leave of the house but some person objected. Any idea who objected?”
Doesn’t matter who it was…. Robertson should have thought through the consequences before he embarked on the filibustering campaign. Just because it all turned to custard when Labour was totally outsmarted in the House, doesn’t give Robertson the opportunity to try and pick up the pieces again.
Outsmarted / outwitted and now out of time. Unlucky.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
[DPF: If leave had been granted, then Grant could have filibustered the bill, so that there was not enough time for VSM's third reading.]
Wrong. When leave was sort the end time was specfied with a voting time sort from memory not later than 5.30pm the same day
So yes, Grant will be no friend of the Royal Society, but a last ditch attempt to get it through was stymied I assume by a National MP. Not a good look either
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Grant Robertson another douchbag MP.
Vote:sadly they bring down the already tarnished reputation even further down.
At least thanks to DPF everyone can know how untrustworthy Grant Robertson is.
September 29th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
This is a bit puzzling. What was Robertson supposed to do exactly? The Labour caucus had decided to oppose the VSM bill by all means possible. Was he supposed to go against his caucus for the sake of a trivial bill tidying up some loose administrative ends for the Royal Society?
Of course, the more amazing thing is the amount of attention the VSM bill got. Labour decided to treat it as die-in-the-ditch stuff – one might have thought it was a measure to abolish the right to collective bargaining. From the comments at Kiwiblog, etc, one might have thought that VSM was the moral equivalent of abolishing slavery. Weird really, when all it did was move the law that little bit further from where National had been happy to leave it in the 90s.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
lipo
Remind me never to ask you to drive me to a train station. You will wait till there is not quite enough time to get there then complain about getting a red light and blame the fact I missed the train on an unreasonable traffic light sequence.
FFS lipo – how many months have Labour had to server their constituents ? They failed – they failed – they failed. There is it clear now ?
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
mikenmild
They were supposed to serve the best interests of the voters not the best interests of Labour party recruitment & fund raising.
Vote:September 29th, 2011 at 9:43 pm
@ Lipo; Robertson’s seeking of leave yesterday was grandstanding of the highest order; far too little and far too late. He’s a game-player, just like so many others on that side of the House.
Vote:September 30th, 2011 at 9:26 am
Rotten to the core
Vote: