24 bills in a few days. Move along, nothing to see here.

The Queen died, and so we must push many controversal bills through quickly. Some thoughts on authority & some points made by New Zealand's blithe media.

Parliament sitting under urgency to pass 24 bills - while the Reserve Bank is 'deliberately engineering a recession'. Merely one month after the SIS thoughtfully released a document helping us to identify extremism, now we see Ardern partnering with Bill Gates to roll-out digital IDs - perhaps we really need to question whether we live in a 'representative' democracy.

We have heads of reserve banks wanting everyone using programmable currency, which they need digital IDs for. Remember how border staff were the first to recieve the genetic vaccine?

It’s a little eye opening. Or eye watering.

What happens when the government takes steps that lack transparency and accountability, - such as rushing these bills. What happens when thousands of submissions to bills are dismissed, no media that will parse apart complex issues - and people left isolated and unherd. By the thousands.

What occurs when this authority is secured behind closed, doors, through emergency measures that avoid standard processes; when select committees dismiss and ignore submissions, or when the Queens death means a tremendous raft of legislation will whizz through at a speed of light.

What happens when the fiduciary relationship breaks down, trust erodes and civil society start to ponder whether the government is moving too fast, too quickly?

Because the power of officials and elected members stems from the authority granted to them via Acts of Parliament.

How is that authority appropriate? If trust declines, and legislation is viewed as arbitrary, or worse, tyrannical, where do we go? The Twitter lawyers are concerned with technical points of law, but what happens in a slow moving democratic train crash? What happens when currency is already digital, we don’t want all our ID eggs in one basket.

Are we anti-authority, or simply pro-democracy?

New Zealand: Parliament Urgency

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/combined/HansDeb_20221122_20221122_32

Hipkins, Nov 22nd, 2022:

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the committee stage of the Water Services Entities Bill; the passing through all stages of the Residential Tenancies (Healthy Homes Standards) Amendment Bill, the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill (No 2), the Social Security (Accommodation Supplement) Amendment Bill, and the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Extension of Act and Reduction of Powers) Amendment Bill; the passing through of the remaining stages of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill, the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill, the Arms (Licence Holders' Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill, and the Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill; the first readings and referral to select committee of the Grocery Industry Competition Bill and the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill; the introduction and first readings and referral to select committee of the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill; the first reading and referral to select committee of the Legal Services Amendment Bill; the introduction, first reading, and referral to select committee of the Accident Compensation (Access Reporting and Other Matters) Amendment Bill; the first reading and referral to select committee of the Health and Safety at Work (Health and Safety Representatives and Committees) Amendment Bill; the third readings of the Security Information in Proceedings Bill, the Security Information in Proceedings (Repeals and Amendments) Bill, the Māori Purposes Bill, the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill, and the Statutes Amendment Bill; and the passing through of the remaining stages of the Organic Products and Production Bill, the Natural Hazards Insurance Bill, the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill, and the Civil Aviation Bill.

The passing of the Queen in September meant that Parliament lost a week of parliamentary sitting time and the granting of this urgency motion will allow some of that time to be made up.

HOW DOES THE NEW ZEALAND MEDIA RESPOND?

Media coverage appears to be via one article each. The articles note the frustration of MPs.

I am yet to see investigative journalism where legal scholars (public law types) are contacted to outline and clarify the implications of this - if we are to call ourselves a representative democracy. This action is not happening in isolation.

Please comment or link to other articles. The journalism seems mainly about promoting ignorance regarding the degree to which this is unprecedented - and whether such activity can truly be understood as responsibly coming from elected representatives in a representative democracy.

I wonder how much of the pressure MPs face might be interpreted as bullying… how easy is it for them to dissent, with the current trajectory of Ministerial elites?

Extracts from media outlets below, summarising the perspective.

New Zealand Herald

‘Reckless and irresponsible’: Govt urgently pushing through 24 bills after Queen’s death caused lost time

Luxon: “The Government hasn’t listened, the Prime Minister now can’t explain the components that are being added in, last-minute, they should stop and they should sit down with councils and find a proper, enduring solution.”
Seymour: said it showed the Government was disorganised and would lead to legislation receiving insufficient scrutiny

Greens: “We want robust debate and I’m not sure how 120 MPs holed up in [Parliament] for such long hours is going to give the level of debate that is also required.”

Hipkins:  responding to the criticism, said the bills going through all stages this week were “largely technical in nature” and “relatively uncontentious”.

Radio New Zealand

Opposition parties question need for urgent sittings at Parliament

Opposition parties are sceptical of the government's explanation for Parliament going into days of urgency.

The House is sitting under urgency for the rest of the week, with MPs sitting from 9am to midnight, with hour-long breaks for lunch and dinner.

ACT leader David Seymour said about four weeks' worth of legislation would be considered this week, but the House was only suspended for a week following the Queen's death.

Stuff

Cheat sheet: What's the rush? Parliament goes into urgency to pass massive wodge of new laws

The Leader of the House, currently Chris Hipkins, is the Government minister in charge of the Government’s business in the House, law-making in particular, working with Parliament’s business committee. In other jurisdictions such as Australia they are known as the “Manager of Government Business”. In essence, they are the minister in charge of shepherding through legislation and deciding in what order bills will be heard and when.

Newsroom 

Three Waters to pass through Parliament in time for Christmas

There are 24 bills, all at varying stages of the legislative process that are proceeding through urgency this week, to make up for lost sitting time when the House rose for a week to mourn the passing of the Queen.

Four of those bills will go straight through without being referred to select committee.

Hipkins told media on Wednesday many of the bills being dealt with under urgency had already been through the “rigorous scrutiny” of a select committee.

“They are largely technical and relatively uncontentious bills … we’re doing things like pushing out the deadline for healthy home standards and making the changes announced yesterday to clean car standards.”

Hipkins said he would be “surprised if anyone was surprised” by any element of the legislation being progressed.

“It’s a choice – people could have more consultation but then they wouldn’t have the certainty of knowing the [healthy homes] deadline has been extended.”

The Prime Minister pushed back on any suggestion urgency was being used to truncate the debate on Three Waters.

“The third reading’s not occurring under urgency so that demonstrates we’re giving greater space for debate, not less,” she said.

More than 100 changes were made to the bill as a result of the work done by the Finance and Expenditure select committee, and Jacinda Ardern said that showed the Government had listened to the public feedback and taken it into account when making amendments.

Daily Telegraph NZ 

WATCH: RAM-RAIDING OUR DEMOCRACY – LABOUR FORCING CONTROVERSIAL LAWS THROUGH PARLIAMENT UNDER ‘URGENCY’

In a video posted today on YouTube, independent journalist Chantelle Baker exposes the undemocratic move by Labour, using the excuse of Queen Elizabeth II’s death 10 weeks ago to take advantage of so-called ‘urgency procedures’.

‘Parliament is currently sitting under urgency’ – they say because of the Queen’s death, but what it really means, and Labour has done this multiple times, the last time they did it was with the ‘traffic lights’ system and rushing through that legislation, they also did it with pushing through the Maori Wards Bill.’

The Spinoff

great info on porn.