National MP Michael Woodhouse described Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as “Robert Muldoon with slogans and kindness” during the heat of a Parliamentary debate on Tuesday afternoon.
Parliament was urgently debating the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill 2020, which allows for alert level 2 to be put in place but grants the Government a huge array of powers.
The bill contains sweeping powers for the Government to implement level 2 which National and civil liberties groups have taken issue with. National and ACT have voted against the bill at its first two readings.
[…] “I’m old enough to remember carless days, wage and price freezes, reducing the road speed limit from 100 kilometres to 80 kilometres per hour – SMPs—by an executive that rode roughshod over this parliamentary process,” Woodhouse said.
[…] I am, frankly, astounded that a Government that purports to be open and transparent, to be kind, and to give the country, the public, the credit for the amazing work that they have done, still increases further and further into their freedoms and their lives.”
The bill remains in committee stage on Wednesday afternoon as the Government move to soften some of its provisions – most concretely by time-limiting the powers the bill gives the Government in three months instead of in two years.
The law would still give police the power to enter a home without a warrant.
stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300011461/coronavirus-national-mp-calls-jacinda-ardern-robert-muldoon-with-slogans-and-kindness
