We almost had an election last week

This, from the " we never heard about that" files.

Rodney Hide has noted that we almost had an election last week. I wasn't going to post on it as I thought it would be picked up by the papers, but it wasn't.

The vote on part 4 of the Committee stages of the Taxation (Annual Rates, Venture Capital and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill was 59-59. The government didn’t have a proxy vote from Jim Anderton’s Progressives. Apparently Matt Robson was so excited that he was getting interviewed on the radio that he forgot to give one. A tie in the committee stages means it goes to a reading and another vote. It a bill ties at the third reading it fails.

Yet this vote was the classic time for just one United Future MP to abstain from voting. Not only would the bill not have been passed but Michael Cullen admitted that we would be having another election right now if the bill failed.

More importantly, the Civil Union Bill would have been delayed or trashed and Paul Adams would be having tea tonight.

This vote was the best way of scuttling the Civil Union Bill and most MP's who opposed the bill missed the opportunity.

The 59-59 vote will probably end up being one of the most significant vote this Parliament has made in this parliamentary term.