The Labour Party does not have very much cause to feel grateful for anything right now. But it should get down on bended knee and thank the Almighty that hardly anybody would have been watching Parliament late on Wednesday afternoon.
Anyone doing so would have witnessed a spectacle which would immediately have brought several words to mind - words such as pitiful, pathetic, embarrassing and disgraceful.
The House was once again debating - or rather trying to debate - the private member's bill sponsored by Act MP Heather Roy which, when passed, will make membership of tertiary student associations no longer compulsory.
Ouch! And it's not hyperbole from Armstrong; we were watching on Wednesday afternoon as this drama unfolded, and the words he uses are absolutely justified. And after a brief description of the Member's Bill process, and Labour's filibuster, he really gets into it: read on:
That is for the future. What matters now is that last Wednesday things shifted from straight filibuster to pure farce. The only characters needed to make this Trevor Mallard-orchestrated protest a complete pantomime were Chuckles the Clown and Dorothy the Dinosaur.
Labour not only demeaned itself, again - something it is perfectly at liberty to do - it also demeaned Parliament, and that is unacceptable.
For the best part of an hour, Labour MPs raised timewasting points of order and forced a series of pointless votes to try to stop debate on Roy's bill from even starting.
Labour made repeated demands that Speaker Lockwood Smith be recalled to the chamber to rule on decisions made by National's Eric Roy, who was chairing the House.
This went beyond the ridiculous by including decisions from Roy (no relation to Heather Roy) granting those very Labour MPs the call to speak in the debate - a perverse case of deliberately biting the hand that feeds.
Those MPs no doubt thought this was all terribly clever. They should watch the replays on Parliament TV. They looked juvenile. Worse, their behaviour would have confirmed everything the public thinks is wrong with Parliament.
Eric Roy's patience eventually ran out and he warned Labour to stop trifling with the chair.
From that point, things got confused as Mallard was told to leave the chamber but somehow remained, and proper debate finally started.
Armstrong is absolutely right to single out Trevor Mallard for his behaviour on Wednesday. Mallard is the shadow Leader of the House, and as such should be the MP setting the example to members of his caucus. Mallard's conduct on Wednesday, especially his badgering of Eric Roy, and his ignoring of the Chairman's order for him to leave the chamber was absolutely disgraceful. We hope that he has watched the video of proceedings and accepted that he was over the top. It was not his finest moment in a career little with not-fine moments.
Armstrong hasn't finished though. He concludes by making the point that many have missed; how Labour's filibuster has affected every MP who has a Bill in the draw. And he fires a shot across the bows of the "principled" Green Party, who sided with Labour; here's his ending:
Heather Roy caught Labour napping by moving the House report progress on the Royal Society of New Zealand Bill and move on to debating her measure.
The National-Act majority duly ensured this happened.
Labour justifiably questioned the use of something which is normally a procedural device to curtail debate. Lockwood Smith agreed it was something Parliament's standing orders committee should examine.
But he ruled that the vote on the motion should stand for the time being. From then, things quickly went downhill.
The Greens should likewise hold their heads in shame over being party to Labour's shoddy behaviour. They put much stock in parliamentary probity. Their only defence for voting in favour of Labour's dubious motions was that Keith Locke, the sole Green MP in the House at the time, seemed distracted.
Some of the Labour MPs caught up in this episode must now surely regret it.
One such MP, Wellington Central's Grant Robertson, felt obliged to post a lengthy explanation on Red Alert, the Labour MPs' blog.
He made no apology for the ways in which Labour was trying to stop Roy's bill. He admitted it was "unedifying" - surely the understatement of the week - but claimed it was all part and parcel of parliamentary practice.
Well, no. A clear line can be drawn between trying to delay a measure's progress through Parliament by filibuster and trying to find and exploit gaps, loopholes and apparent anomalies in Parliament's rules to subvert the will of the majority. Labour crossed that line.
On top of that, Labour's filibustering has denied other parties' MPs the opportunity to get their own private member's bills - some of which are worthy measures deserving of enactment - on to the order paper.
That is unfair. But it is symptomatic of Labour's lingering arrogance from its years in power.
Incredibly, it continues to try to pull the wool over voters' eyes by promising to bring in private member's bills to block things such as National's plans for partial state asset sales. Such talk is poppycock. Such bills would first have to be lucky enough to be drawn in the ballot which determines which bills get on to the order paper.
In the last ballot, 24 bills were vying for a lone spot.
Furthermore, there has not been a ballot since November last year. No prizes for guessing who is responsible for that.
This is a remarkable piece of "from-the-heart" opinion from John Armstrong. It should be photocopied on A3 sheets, many of them, and pasted on the walls of Labour's caucus room, and it should be read, word-for-word, at Labour's next caucus meeting.
Labour's conduct on Wednesday was not only everything that John Armstrong has bescribed above; it was a direct. concerted attack on the integrity of Parliament. That, above all, is the reason that it needs to be widely condemned, and we applaud John Armstrong for doing just that.
5 comments:
Very good read.
Watched Ms Sepuloni's performance and was not impressed, at all. And she is called by some a rising star! Words escape me if she is one of those.
Faxing ( and on repeat send mode) it to every labour branch and to Mr Goffs office would be quite amusing.
I think that the new Acrobat enables PDFs to be faxed from the source file.
If not i have seen other forms of software that can do that.
It is indeed a rare event when Armstrong puts the boot into Labour and on this occasion every word is justified.
He just overlooked Speaker Lockwood Smith calling Mallard inept twice.
I loved it.
Reminiscent of a number of occasions the opposition performed like this during the previous government.
Remember INV2.
BELIEF is not FACT. It is more akin to self-delusion.
For example, I BELIEVE that you are a true christian.
I wait now for evidence to affirm this, as I do from Graham Capill, a certain Norwegian, and all the team here at Stock's News.
I am absolutely certain if I had the Harridan Witch AKA Dim Margaret Wilson screeching at me every Qtime I would be more than a little exercised.
Whether I would allow that to derail my respect for rules and good manners, I doubt.
Sepelone's flagrant disregard for the rules of parliament and her sullen lippy, disrespectful performance coupled with her refusal to acknowledge The Speakers Authority warranted expulsion by "naming"
She gave Mad Cow Disease a false image.
Verification word horidion conjures up some appropriate mental images.
I understand there is a necessary delusion required here. It helps one through life it seems. A crutch. Turning a blind eye to reality doesn't make it right.
REV. C
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