The Government can be accused of many things. One these is being a bad faith operator by deliberately putting legislation out for submissions at a time when they know most businesses, organizations and individuals likely to be affected are on holiday.
Right now there are 19 Bills of Parliament open for public submissions after the First Reading in Parliament. Many of these were put out for submissions during the last week of Parliamentary business, when the Minister/s sponsoring the Bills knew full well that businesses and their employees are not going to be at work, will not be able to contact staff with input necessary to submissions, and so forth.
I consider this to be bad faith operating. On one hand the Government will claim to have put legislation out for submission, but by deliberately setting the deadlines for submissions to expire in holiday time suggests a deliberate contempt for potential submitters.
One can also consider this to be not in the best interests of the Bills of Parliament since many submitters with indepth knowledge that might have strengthened individual Bills are going to miss out, or will get a submission in, but it will be very rushed and may miss critical points.
When one looks at the breadth and variety of the Bills of Parliament currently open for submission, what does this suggest to you about their respect for democratic process and the wellbeing of New Zealand?
As a New Zealander I take pride in our international transparency rating of Government and government systems. For over a decade we have enjoyed consistently among the best ratings in the world, with only one of the nordic countries – usually Denmark – ahead of us. I sincerely doubt when Transparency International (T.I.) release their international ranking that we will be footing it with Denmark, and at worst we might not even be in the top 10 or 15.
In 2023, T.I. rated us at 3rd with a score of 85 out of 100. Only Finland and Denmark were ahead on 87 and 90 respectively. I do not expect New Zealand to have such a high score when the 2024 ranking are released. New Zealand is better than this.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 