Righties rise in revolution re: retrospective law

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, March 25th, 2009 - 13 comments
Categories: blogs, Parliament - Tags: , ,

No, wait, they didn’t. Idiot/Savant from No Right Turn explains:

Back in 2006, the (then-Labour) government passed the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill, which retrospectively validated Parliamentary Services expenditure in the wake of a nonsensical, retrospective reinterpretation by the Auditor-General. The rabids in the sewer (and some supposedly outside it) preached revolution.

Today, the (now-National) government introduced the Appropriation (2007/08 Financial Review) Bill, which among other things retrospectively validates various items of unapproved, unappropriated expenditure.

Will we see the same outpouring of outrage from the sewer, or will they finally admit that such retrospective validations are standard procedure and happen almost every year? Hmmm, I wonder…

13 comments on “Righties rise in revolution re: retrospective law ”

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  1. cocamc 1
    25 March 2009 at 10:38 am

    I guess I would be a rightie by your definition and don’t agree with any retrospective legislation by any government. Both parties do it far too often for my liking.

    • Pascal's bookie 1.1
      25 March 2009 at 10:53 am

      So you diasgree with Cullen, and think that the Herald should have paid that tax?

  2. TomSe 2
    25 March 2009 at 10:55 am

    By the way – there is no shame in quoting NRT extensively. He is one of the sharpest knives in the drawer, and frequently does the work paid and trained journalists SHOULD be doing.

    I think I’ll put him up for a knighthood. I know he’ll turn it down, but the post he will do about it will be worth reading.

  3. IrishBill 3
    25 March 2009 at 11:28 am

    Crikey, at this rate we’re going to have to pay I/S a syndication fee.

  4. Ari 4
    25 March 2009 at 1:12 pm

    In an ideal world, this sort of thing would be unconstitutional. Of course, to do that you’d have to convince parliament to vote to take away their ability to cover their own asses, which is unlikely to happen.

  5. Felix 5
    25 March 2009 at 10:22 pm

    Jeez, none of them even bother showing up to comment.

    And poor old burt’s banned, so I’ll have to do this for him I suppose: retrospective validation!

    That’s how he would’ve wanted it I think.

  6. Killinginthenameof 6
    25 March 2009 at 11:56 pm

    I was hoping someone would invite burt to write a guess post on the topic.

    • Felix 6.1
      26 March 2009 at 3:11 am

      That’s an excellent idea. Standardistas, can you email burt and invite him back for a guest post? It’s his mastermind specialty subject.

      Or you could just wait ’til his ban’s up and get him to write it retrospectively…

  7. unaha-closp 7
    26 March 2009 at 5:40 pm

    The reason there is a difference in reaction is that the Right were able to alert the public of an $800,000 misappropriation by Labour prior to the 2006 retrospective legislation. The non-issue this year is because the Left have failled to publicise a similarly large denomination misappropriation on the part of National. Perhaps National didn’t misappropriate that much.

  8. dwi attorney 8
    1 April 2009 at 7:18 pm

    Great question: Will we see the same outpouring of outrage from the sewer, or will they finally admit that such retrospective validations are standard procedure and happen almost every year? I suspect there will extreme responses from those on the extreme ends of political spectrum. Thanks for the post.