Wednesday, September 15, 2010



Rare unity indeed

Over on Red Alert, labour's Brendon Burns praises Parliament's "rare unity" in passing the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act. Meanwhile, there's another sort of rare unity in the comments to that post: after 27 comments, not a single person has spoken out in favour of the bill. Instead, all see it as a dangerous encroachment on our democracy, offensive in principle.

Meanwhile, over on Frogblog, Green co-leader Russel Norman tries to explain his party's decision to back the legislation:

We tried to improve the legislation. We moved half a dozen amendments, but National and Labour opposed most.

[...]

And then after all that we had to decide how to vote on it. We decided to vote for it to support Canterbury’s recovery. But it was with a heavy heart given all our reservations about the act.

His commenters aren't really buying it either (though there are a couple who so support them). There's a palpable sense of disappointment that the Greens did not stand by their principles last night and stand up for our democracy and constitution. Someone has to speak up for those things, and I'm very sad that the Greens didn't.