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Dear John, The Government has been caught sneaking a rarely-used, undemocratic legal provision into its Three Waters legislation, in an attempt to make it harder to overturn. This week, while Parliament sat under urgency to ram-through the Three Waters legislation, Labour and the Greens added a provision that means once Three Waters becomes law, it would take 60 per cent of MPs to overturn it, instead of a simple majority. This tool has been used incredibly rarely in New Zealand, for good reason. Until now they have been reserved for core constitutional issues like our electoral law. This sets a very dangerous precedent. If a National Government had passed a provision like this over, say, for example, the three strikes sentencing regime, Labour and the Greens would be outraged - and rightly so. Labour has used the veil of urgency in Parliament to push through an undemocratic clause in an attempt to block future changes to a broken bill. But there is still time to block this undemocratic change. Labour and the Greens need to immediately walk this move back. Three Waters is a deeply unpopular reform - National will repeal it and replace it with changes that ensure assets remain in local ownership, and remove co-governance of public services. If you haven’t done so already, please sign our petition so we can send a message to Labour about how unpopular these changes are.
Thank you Simon Watts |
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