It’s called a conscience
February 5th, 2012 at 1:00 pm by David FarrarA profile in the HoS of NZ First MP Tracey Martin. I have no issue with Ms Martin and wish her well in Parliament. But one statement from her I take issue with:
Martin’s decision to enter politics came out of frustration with her local representation. “Our MP was Lockwood Smith, and a number of policies came in which I disagreed with: prostitution reform and the lowering of the drinking age. The community asked him to take a stand and he followed the party line.”
Lockwood did not follow the party line. There was no party line. Both those issues were conscience issues. Lockwood voted on those law changes on the basis of what he thought was best for New Zealand.
Far from Lockwood voting on the party line, he was one of a very small number of National MPs who voted for decriminalising solicitation.
In terms of voting as your community wishes, does that mean Ms Martin would vote to decriminalise cannabis if a poll showed the majority of her community supported it?
I prefer the wonderful quote from British MP Edmund Burke in 1774:
… it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
I want MPs who will exercise their own judgement (even if it is a judgement I disagree with), than those who will just vote for what is popular.
Related posts:
- Watkins on conscience votes
- Conscience Vote Comparisons
- Conscience vote on drink drive limit?
- Nats confirm conscience vote on alcohol purchase age
February 5th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
She was upset with her local electorate MP, so she decided to become a list MP? Anyone else see the hypocrisy there?
Vote:February 5th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Doesn’t popular mean
f the people?
Vote:February 5th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
Tracey Martin is touted as being the cream of NZ First’s new crop of MP’s. If that’s the case, the skim milk is going to be rancid!
Vote:February 5th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Remind me why these clowns exist, I can’t think of a reason?
Vote:February 5th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
There are few conscience votes. What evidece is there that an MP has conscience let alone a greater one than the average voter. These issues should be decided by binding referendum.
Vote:February 5th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
So you will withdraw your support for the system that ensures that 104 MP’s vote against the public will.
Now we know that you don’t support the staus quo as it stands but 104 people apparently all voted according to their constituents suggestions and voted to retain a discrimatory wage system that disenfranchises some Kiwi’s who don’t have he power to vote.
That is both immoral and more importantly unethical.
Vote:Justified apparently because its Parliament and our Parliament now bows to the wishes of the UN and the USA more than it does our own fellow Kiwi’s.
February 5th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
At least Ms Martin has grown a little older and has family and has done a few things. A bit more sound than a couple of pretty boys still in the jocks who are currently well paid goons for the National Party.
Vote:February 5th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
The trouble with Burke’s quote, is that MMP and the whipping of MPs into line was before his time?
It’s all very well for an MP to be voting their conscience, but the general public did not vote for many of those MPs.
eg, the smacking law. You get a minor party like The Greens (of whom only a small percentage of the population voted for) proposing a change in law, tabling a bill, then the MPs of both major parties being whipped into line by their leaders to support it.
Is this what Burke had in mind when he wrote what he did? I very much doubt that he thought of this as democracy in action.
I know this does not entirely apply to Lockwood, but I’m talking generally here in terms of conscience voting and the way it is often practised in NZ.
Vote:February 5th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
If we had binding referendum would NZ have:
women with the vote, or at least have the vote before Swiss women got it in 1971?
Vote:male homosexuality being legal?
be legal for men to offer to pay for sex, but not for women to offer it for money?
safe, legal abortion be available?
February 6th, 2012 at 5:52 am
Agreed Michael – democracy, majority rule and referenda are lousy at protecting human rights. MPs exercising their personal judgment are sometimes even worse, but usually they are better. A solid constitution is even better still.
Vote:February 6th, 2012 at 6:28 am
Democracy? No. It’s pretty good at that.
Referenda? Yes. A pretty lousy tool indeed.
I believe National left it as a conscience vote.
Vote:February 6th, 2012 at 9:42 am
It’s funny how anything and I do mean ANYTHING that has to do with sex brings out the tight-lipped, negative among us who want their personal opinions on “decency” to be imposed on all as inflexible law.
Don’t like prostitution?
(1) Don’t hire a prozzy, and
Vote:(2) That’s all, and
(3) That’s all.