It’s full steam ahead.
National MP Simon Watts sent an email out yesterday saying:
The government has been caught sneaking a rarely used, undemocratic legal provision into its Three Waters legislation, in an attempt to make it harder to overturn.
This week, while parliament sat under urgency to ram-through the Three Waters legislation, Labour and the Greens added a provision that means once Three Waters becomes law, it would take 60 per cent of MPs to overturn it, instead of a simple majority.
This tool has been used incredibly rarely in New Zealand, for good reason. Until now they have been reserved for core constitutional issues like our electoral law.
This sets a very dangerous precedent. If a National government had passed a provision like this over, say, for example, the three strikes sentencing regime, Labour and the Greens would be outraged – and rightly so. […]
Labour and the Greens have now colluded to entrench in law a contentious policy position, without any real debate and while the House was sitting under urgency. […]
As constitutional lawyer Dr Dean Knight has said, “this is unusual and doesn’t sit well with our current constitutional traditions… it’s regrettable this significant constitutional development only came to light in committee of the whole stage and was not subject to scrutiny and public submission”.
Frank Newman at the NZCPR has also written a pointed article summarising the Three Waters coup.
Discuss it on The BFD.
