More of this please, David Seymour, not less

 

ACT MP David Seymour and others have been criticising the latest Private Members Bill to be drawn from the ballot, a bill by National backbencher Nuk Korako to debate lost luggage. Says David:

Silly bills like this, from both sides of Parliament, clog up the ballot, reducing the chances of more serious bills (like my End of Life Choice Bill) being drawn and voted on.

I think David may be missing a point.

It’s certainly true that MPs debating and passing more serious bills like his End of Life Choice Bill would be a good thing. A very good thing indeed. But as David and you and I all know, that’s overwhelmingly not what those bloody thieves would be doing if they weren’t debating lost luggage. If they were not debating lost luggage – a bid, a very small bid indeed, to help people regain their property – they would undoubtedly instead be debating and passing bills taking people’s freedom and property away.

That, overhelmingly is what our parliamentarians do.That is how they spend almost all their bloody time. Coming up for example are bills that would reduce trade and make renting more difficult, alcohol more difficult to purchase and nearly a dozen more iwi independently wealthy.

So in that respect I say we need more bills like National backbencher Nuk Korako’s, not less. Many, many more of them. More bills about very little, making small but very marginal improvements, clogging up the order paper so that all the more serious bills stripping our rights and freedoms linger longer out back in the parliamentary badlands. Let them linger there forever, I say.

So I say of National backbencher Nuk Korako’s bill, until we have a parliament prepared to present bills protecting our rights and freedoms, let us have much more of this sort of thing instead, please. A whole shedload lot more of it.

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