Defiance erodes ‘rules based’ order
MEASLES is spreading through Auckland, and more widely in New Zealand (as well as overseas), highlighting not just the effect of the lies spread by exdoctor Andrew Wakefield and his deluded ‘‘antivaxxers’’, and New Zealand’s inadequate and inequitable funding of primary care, but also the highly infectious nature of measles.
It seems other things are infectious, too, including lawbreaking by politicians. In the United States its president, who’s been doing his best to subvert its constitutional division of powers, is undergoing a formal investigation into his withholding of foreign aid to pressure another country’s president to do dirty work for his personal electoral benefit. The [hardly] United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has ruled that the Prime
Minister acted unlawfully in advising the sovereign to prorogue Parliament, but Mr Johnson still seems hellbent on defying the Act passed by Parliament to prevent a nodeal Brexit.
Now, in New Zealand, the National Party has decided that all its MPs will defy Parliament’s own law, its standing orders.
Part B, section (1)1(a) of appendix D to the standing orders of the House of Representatives provides that official television coverage of the House mustn’t be used in any medium for ‘‘political advertising or election campaigning (except with the permission of all members shown)’’; that extracts must be ‘‘fair and accurate’’; and that breach of those conditions ‘‘may be treated as a contempt and proceeded against accordingly’’.
National’s leader Simon Bridges shared on social media an ‘‘attack ad’’: an edited version of official footage of Labour MP Deborah Russell discussing Greek mythology and ‘‘the intellectual history of wellbeing’’ before being asked by Assistant Speaker Ruth Dyson to keep to the topic of debate, which cut between parts of her speech and zoomed in at various speeds. The editing clearly distorted the speech, and Labour’s junior whip Kieran McAnulty complained to Speaker Trevor Mallard.
Mr Mallard may think the standing order is a bit pointless, but act he must when a complaint is made, so he ruled that edited versions of official footage must be removed by 5pm on September 27. National MP Gerry Brownlee initially said that National would obey, as ‘‘the responsible thing to do’’, though he denounced Mr Mallard’s ruling, as ‘‘censorship’’. But he announced later that all National MPs would share that edited clip, after
5pm, in direct defiance of the ruling, maintaining that the advertisement didn’t break any rules (can’t he read?).
The accusation of ‘‘censorship’’ is nonsense: the Speaker acted minimally, only proscribing edited versions of recordings, not unmodified footage.
National isn’t alone in editing recordings — most parties have done so, and must now stop. But, ironically, it was the National Party which insisted, during the 2017 review of standing orders, when the ban on using recordings for ‘‘satire, ridicule, or denigration’’ was rescinded, that using them for political advertising or election campaigning, without consent from those shown, should remain forbidden. Did hubris make it forget that it might, one day, be in opposition?
Expecting MPs to behave fairly may be naively optimistic. But National’s defiance of the Speaker’s ruling is destructive. National claims to be the party of order and law: Mr Bridges, earlier this year, piously decried ‘‘Strike 4 Climate’’, saying it was just a chance for pupils to miss school and ‘‘muck about’’, and its website proclaims: ‘‘We’ve always been the party which is tough on crime’’ — but not, it seems, on lawbreaking.
It could have raised the matter with the standing orders committee, which met on Monday (and which has now invited public submissions on the rule), and sought to amend the standing order. But defying the Speaker chips away at the foundations of rulesbased order, upon which society (particularly small nations such as New Zealand) depends.
Rulesbased order is already threatened by politicians, even in countries, such as the UK and the US, once regarded by some as models for democracy. By its defiance of the standing order National has joined those leaders in promoting norules anarchy.