NRT: Legislate in haste, repent before you’ve even started

Written By: - Date published: 1:10 pm, March 12th, 2015 - 8 comments
Categories: national, Parliament - Tags: , , ,

I/S at No Right Turn on the latest Nat omnishambles – these financial “geniuses” can’t even calculate their own pay rates correctly…

Legislate in haste, repent before you’ve even started

When John Key promised to remove MPs’ outrageous, undeserved pay rise – without showing us the bill to do so – I predicted that it would be a knee-jerk rush job, which we’ll probably need to fix later. It turns out that “later” is sooner than I thought: National is now having to pull the bill and redraft it before it has even been voted on out of fears it could give MPs even more money:

Prime Minister John Key’s plans to quickly ram through changes to the way MPs’ pay is set have hit a speed bump amid concerns they could deliver higher, not lower, increases in future.

[…]

But plans to debate it this week have been repeatedly revised, and it now seems unlikely to reach the floor of the House until next week.

“On Monday it was going to be Wednesday, on Tuesday it was Wednesday or Thursday, on Wednesday morning it was Wednesday, on Wednesday afternoon it was Thursday and today it’s next week,” an Opposition source said.

All of which is a potent reminder of why we have select committees and public submissions: to catch problems like this before they become law, and allow the public to suggest alternatives. And it suggests that what National should have done if it wanted to fix the problem this year is a two-stage process: an urgent bill to claw back the undeserved pay rise and substitute a politically set one in its place, followed by a proper bill through the normal Parliamentary process to fix the system in the long term. Instead, their poor political management and desire to be seen to be acting immediately has resulted in such a mess that the window for retrospectivity has basically passed. Thanks to National, MPs will probably get to keep this year’s pay rise. And the public should hold them accountable for that.

(I have no problem with retrospectivity to correct a mistake, if it is done in a timely manner. But as more time passes, the case for a retrospective clawback becomes untenable. You could just do it immediately afterwards, before the money had been spent or plans made on that basis. But now that its no longer going to be immediate in any sense of the word, I think we just have to live with the mistake and instead commit to fixing it properly in future).

8 comments on “NRT: Legislate in haste, repent before you’ve even started ”

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  1. tc 1
    12 March 2015 at 2:36 pm

    No worries they will blame Hager and KDC job done

  2. Craig Glen Eden 2
    12 March 2015 at 3:30 pm

    More mess to be cleaned up what a shamble this lot are.

    • tc 2.1
      12 March 2015 at 3:40 pm

      you assume they intend to. They’re way too busy pork barrelling, snooping, TPPA’ing etc

      It’ll be smudged over and ignored by the MSM as most of their inadequacies and non deliveries are.

  3. ScottGN 3
    12 March 2015 at 6:43 pm

    What a load of nasty, patronising, sexist crap from Woodhouse to Turei on this today.

    • tc 3.1
      12 March 2015 at 7:07 pm

      Once you get past the main frontmen(shonkey, Blinglish, Joyce) it’s an ankle deep talent pool that reverts to mysoginist derogatory ugly mode when asked to front up.

      Easy to see why these clowns are gagged during election campaigns.

  4. felix 4
    12 March 2015 at 8:44 pm

    Very charitable to assume it was accidental.

    Does anyone really believe John Key made his 100-odd million by using his positions of influence to get paid less?

    • tc 4.1
      13 March 2015 at 7:32 am

      Not for one second Felix, cynical and calculated from the shonkey one, gotta reward the sock puppets.

  5. Incognito 5
    12 March 2015 at 11:43 pm

    Premature wankejucalation.