I'm sure most of you are aware by now of Blair Mulholland's online petition, calling for the Governor-General to refuse Royal Assent to the recently passed bill validating illegal spending of parliamentary funds on electioneering. At the time of writing this, there are currently over 22,000 signatures, and this is still rising fairly rapidly.wallpepers auto moto
This is demonstration of just how abhorrent this legislation is to a large number of New Zealanders. wallpepers auto moto
Validating legislation is actually fairly common, and as the Treasury advice to Dr Cullen states, is done annually as part of the normal budget process. Consequently, I wouldn't have a problem with legislation that strictly validated the illegal spending. However, I have a number of problems with the form that it has taken.wallpepers auto moto
1) There is no requirement that the money be repaid in the legislation. Now that this bill has been passed, there is absolutely no legal requirement that the money be repaid (there wasn't much of a legal requirement before that, but even that has disappeared). Any validating legislation shuold have been delayed until after all the money was repaid, or alternatively, the validation should not have come into effect until after it was repaid.wallpepers auto moto
2) It redefines what money can be spent on for parliamentary purposes to include anything that doesn't explicitly ask for a vote. This provision expires at the end of next year, but it means that if we have an early election, any party can produce an equivalent of the pledge cards using public money.wallpepers auto moto
3) It explicitly kills off the Darnton vs. Clark lawsuit, and as noted on several other blogs, Labour explicitly voted to do this, when they voted down an ammendment to leave the lawsuit unaffected. This means that the High Court cannot now determine if the spending really was illegal, and what an appropriate remedy would be. It greatly concerns me that the Government is able to kill off court action against itself by changing the law while the case was in progress. Governments frequently change the law in response to court decisions (where the courts have found that the law didn't say what the Government intended it to say), but the only other example of this sort of behaviour was Muldoon.wallpepers auto moto
4) The law has been rushed through under urgency, without any time for select committee scrutiny and public submissions. There was no good reason for this to be rushed through. It was probably done this quickly simply to kill off the issue politically (by denying submissions) and by stopping the Darnton vs. Clark lawsuit before the trail proper started in the near future.wallpepers auto moto
However, the solution requested by the petition is probably worse than the law itself. Royal Assent has never been denied in New Zealand, and has not been denied in the UK since the early 1700s. While I, unlike some, think that the power to deny Royal Assent still does exist in New Zealand, I think using it in this case would provoke a constitutional crisis. The power to deny assent exists for exceptional circumstances, and as repugnant as this law is, I don't think it quite qualifies there. I would only expect the Governor-General to deny Royal Assent if the Government tried to extend its term, give itself dictatorial powers, or something similar. wallpepers auto moto
The passage of this law should prompt us to look at codifying a constitution to prevent such abuses in future, or at least changing the rules around urgency to make sure that such laws go through the proper process. But this does not mean that Royal Assent should be denied. This is a political act, and should be dealt with by the voters at the next election.wallpepers auto moto
In any case, I suspect that the Governor-General has signed the bill by now, making the issue moot.wallpepers auto moto
Comments
Finally, sanity on the Royal Assent! I'll quote it verbatim.wallpepers auto moto