Well done minors and National

I’ve blogged previously on the Government’s Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Amendment Bill, which has serious consequences for investigative journalism and historians, as it restricts access to the births and deaths register, as an attempt to make identity fraud more difficult.

At the sedition press conference on Tuesday, one of the MPs mentioned that the minors were also working on this issue, and the NZ Herald today reveals that with National, have the numbers to get significant change.

Now this should not be a partisan issue. But as is often the case third term Governments get out of touch and stubborn on issues like this – often because they have been blinded by advice from their officials that this *must* be done. So it is a good feature of MMP that while the Government can get its core policies through (Governments do need to be able to govern) , the other parties can combine to stop or amend stupid laws.

Labour used to be good at working in an MMP environment. They seem to be losing their touch, and there is an intriguing possibility of further legislative leadership by the non poodle minor parties. For they have worked out that if they can gather 13 votes amongst themselves, then all they need to do is get either National or Labour on board.