Labour wants to break another promise
Nanaia Mahuta - one of Labour's strongest opponents to the Foreshore and Seabed Act - has a private members bill that extends legal aid to cover foreshore and seabed claims which has highly pissed off Winston Peters as NZ First supported the legislation partly on the basis that there will be no extension of legal aid eligibility.
Although this is a private members bill, such bills have to have the backing of the Labour hierarchy and this bill appears to be a backdoor way of getting the Foreshore and Seabed Act closer to what Labour intended.
I actually recon that this bill has the intention of a Government bill, disguised as a bill from a member everybody knows was an opponent of the Act as passed and only voted for it to please the bosses. Expect Labour to crack up the whips if it is ends up being a conscience issue.
It will be interesting to see what response Helen Clark will provide Winston Peters on this.
Labour: can you trust them. No, you can't
2 comments:
I think I've figured it out:
The Maori party will be forced to vote in favour of it and dilute criticism of the Labour Maori MPs. But the whole thing is hypocritical anyway and it will back-fire on them.
No, however I did think about it when I saw the PMs comments.
It was my understanding that the bill had only been in the ballot a day or so and was intended by Mahuta to be pulled after the election.
It does appear, even after Clark's comments, that there is some support in Labour for the bill. In terms of the third to last par of the post, I considered removing that but I was entitled to my opinion at the time, as that is what I thought.
Given Miss Clarks capacity to twist the truth, I have no proof she told the truth either way about her lack of knowledge of this bill so I just have to take her word on it, whether she told the truth or not.
For the above reasons this blog posting remains unaltered.
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