Thomas Coughlan writes:
The Government will shortly unveil its plan to give voters a choice on moving to a four-year Parliamentary term. …
Act’s bill was first put up as a members’ bill in the last Parliament. That bill would not have automatically extended the maximum length of that term to four years. Instead, it would have given the Governor General the ability to extend the term from three years to four if control over Parliament’s select committees was effectively handed over to the Opposition, allowing a far greater deal of scrutiny of the Government.
The changes would only take effect if a majority of voters approved them in a referendum. …
If approved at a referendum, the proposal could lead to the largest transfer of power back to the legislature in recent times, and would likely have flow-on effects on how Parliament functions and the type of candidates selected to be MPs.
I desperately want both these reforms to happen. Both could play a huge role in improving policy making in New Zealand.
The four year term is badly needed. Almost every other country has four or five years. Three years is simply not enough time to implement good policy, and see if it has worked before the next election. We almost always give a government a second term because we rightly think three years is not enough. With a four year term, I think we would see some bad governments lose office after just one term.
But also very important is the proposal to hand over control of the select committees to the opposition. This would allow far more rigorous questioning of Ministers and CEs, lead to more inquiries into important issues and generally improve golding the Government to account.
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