The Government has passed seven pieces of legislation in the six days between Parliaments restarting after the election and stopping for the Christmas break.
The Government invoked urgency to allow them to achieve this target and the use of urgency has, according to a report published on the Stuff News website, been criticised by opposition parties and civil society.
The whole tone of this report seems to be that the coalition government has done something wrong by passing legislation under urgency and in the comments regarding specific changes to the “Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning acts”, there is much mention of opposition to this change.
The comments stated that this is a complicated area of law, governing every element of construction and the built environment. The new government repealed the RMA reform legislation replacing them with a slightly amended RMA.
Te Pāti Māori and the Labour Party criticised the Government for removing mentions of Te Tiriti o Waitangi that had been present in the previous RMA. It replaces those mentions with “The Treaty”.
The Law Society said the use of urgency on this bill was a significant concern. Environmental Law Committee convenor Vicki Morrison-Shaw said an open public consultation period was needed.
”We recognise there are a range of views about the repeal of the NBEA and SPA, however, those views – and a comprehensive and considered approach to further reform – should be subject to our ordinary democratic processes,” she said.
Well I have news for them: the democratic process was much more in evidence with these changes than at any other time with the Labour government’s use of urgency. All of these changes passed in the last week were part of the coalition party’s election manifestos and were signalled well before the election.
When the electorate made the choice to vote in a new government they did so in the knowledge that these changes were going to be made if the government changed and the fact that they still voted for change signalled that the electorate was OK with these changes being made even though Labour, Te Party Maori and the mainstream media may not have liked the result.
That is the democratic process at work as opposed to the way the Labour government operated over the past two terms.
It seems to me that the mainstream media are determined to find fault with anything that this government tries to do and like a little child that did not get its own way it is determined to shout and scream and try to bully the public into agreeing with their left leaning socialist view of life.
I didn’t see the Stuff News website publishing articles against the use of urgency when the Labour government was in power, but then again they did give them the Public Interest Journalism Funding so maybe that made some difference to their viewpoint.
The bills passed under urgency over the past two weeks were:
Reserve Bank mandate changes
This change means that, when considering how to place the official cash rate, the Reserve Bank would focus exclusively on inflation as used to be the case before the Labour government made changes.
Fair Pay Agreements repeal
The Fair Pay Agreement was a fresh act from the Labour Government, which would have allowed sector-wide collective employment negotiations and National and ACT had campaigned on repealing this act.
Clean Car Discount removal
National had branded the discount a “Ute Tax”.
This was an administrative piece of legislation, agreed unanimously after a very short reading on Tuesday, to ensure things across the public sector didn’t start to fall over.
Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning acts repeal
In its final days, the Labour Government passed comprehensive resource management law reform, replacing the Resource Management Act (RMA), with the Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Acts.
This is a complicated area of law, governing every element of construction and the built environment. The new government repealed this RMA reform legislation and replaced them with a slightly amended RMA.
Allow 90-day trials for all new hires
The Government passed legislation to allow every employer to use 90-day trials.
90-day trials allow for new hires to work trials before being permanently hired.
Taxation Principles Reporting Repeal
The Coalition Government repealed a fairly new law passed under the Labour Government, called the Taxation Principles Reporting Act, which required Inland Revenue to report, annually, on how the tax system was working – including tax avoidance.
No matter what the opposition and the mainstream media may want to have us believe regarding these changes and the use of urgency to get them through the house before the Xmas break, they are mostly just taking the legislation back to the status quo in place prior to the Labour government making changes during their time in power.
In relation to the repeal of the Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Acts, the Law Society said the use of urgency on this bill was a significant concern. Environmental Law Committee convenor Vicki Morrison-Shaw said an open public consultation period was needed.
”We recognise there are a range of views about the repeal of the NBEA and SPA, however, those views – and a comprehensive and considered approach to further reform – should be subject to our ordinary democratic processes,” she said.
The fact that this repeal of these Acts removed requirements for race-based decision making under those acts surely must be in line with common democratic principles of one person one vote with all votes being equal regardless of ethnicity.
Taking this into account alongside the National Party’s campaign to make changes to the RMA including one year consenting for major infrastructure and renewable energy projects, alongside their ‘Going for Housing Growth’ plan in their first term in government, alongside work on a longer-term programme to repeal and replace the RMA; surely this process will satisfy their calls for use of ordinary democratic processes unlike the undemocratic ethnocentric changes made by the previous Labour government.
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By Andy Loader, Poke the Bear