Russell Brown On The Lack Of Democracy
Russell Brown has just posted a blog summarising all the newspaper editorials on the rush of legislation that qualified as “urgent” by the National led government.
He also blogs on the lack of transparency and accountability by the National led government rushing through legislation that has not being made available to the public to scruitinize and make submissions.
You might think a new government that opened its Parliament with a series of procedural flubs would have some idea of the limits of its own competence. But National has, instead, lumbered into urgency to pass a clutch of bills that were being debated even before they were drafted.
When drafts appeared, they were not made available to the public — and, staggeringly, it was left to the Green Party to scan paper copies and make them available on its own website. None of these new laws will receive proper scrutiny. No member of the public will be able to make a submission on them. The ideas in them will not be subject to the basic tests of a Parliamentary democracy.
Urgency might be justified for the tax and Kiwisaver legislation. But what kind of idiot puts forward significant changes to the educational system as a fait accompli? Is Anne Tolley really so clever she can write policy so good it needs no scrutiny?
Tags: National, Russell Brown