List MP SoSaturnistic writes the following Feminist Initiative statement on the state of the current Parliament:

Every politician these days will try to at least act as though political debate and freedom is something that ought to be intensely cherished. We see the same faces pay the same lip-service to this idea, most recently in a motion regarding the anniversary of the founding of this country’s Parliamentary press gallery. “Free press and vibrant political debate is vital” they say, but in fact many on the Government benches seem to fundamentally disagree with this notion through their actions.

Recently we have seen a string of recent motions on various topics, including refugee policy, the climate strikes, and the attitude towards business. In each of these cases, the member for Northland has decided to take it upon himself to radically amend and overhaul the content of the motions to spin them in favour of Government policy. We saw this with the refugee policy motion, where this member decided to remove portions of the motion which would have made our refugee quota system not racist if implemented. We saw this with the business motion moved by the Liberals, one which we would have voted down originally, where the Government took a critical motion and morphed it into one which praised the Government. Now we are seeing it with the climate strikes motion, where the member for Northland has decided to take a non-partisan motion and try to turn it into one which is spun in favour of Government policy. This will likely come to pass if prior cases are of any value

Perhaps this situation would not be so regrettable if we could debate and discuss the amended motions. Once their meaning has shifted so greatly, it is only normal for political parties to stake out new positions in relation to them. However, this is not the case. Instead of open debate, the Speaker of the House has decided to ban debate on amended motions, meaning that there is no time allotted for opposition parties to make their views clear and articulate arguments when the member for Northland inevitably vandalises them and distorts them well beyond their original meaning. The current Government’s media strategy, to simply morph all motions in favour of the Government while gaming a system which prohibits any further discussion, has become a genuinely Orwellian in that all ideas are carefully moulded and twisted to act in service of the current regime.

This disturbing conduct has plainly revealed itself with the Labour Party’s recent article regarding the business motion. In that case, our party was chastised for supposedly opposing New Zealand businesses because our MPs did not vote in favour of the motion. Our party has no fundamental issue with ethical business; we simply could not endorse a motion which pledged blind support for the Government’s policy in good faith. We had no opportunity to express this reasonable viewpoint of course, but the Labour Party took this as an opportunity to make petty political attacks against this party. There was no right of reply, no right for the opposition to clarify.

Indeed, these authoritarian actions are exclusively efforts coming from the Labour Party. The fact that many Greens have protested against such amendments before is proof enough of this phenomenon. The Social Development Minister, one of the few true Greens in this current Cabinet, has even broken the age old principle of cabinet collective responsibility to try to defeat this trend. Unfortunately, even this was not enough to stop this toxic and dangerous behaviour.

Therefore Feminist Initiative is calling for the genuine opening up of political debate and discussion in our Parliament, either through a reasonable understanding with the Government or through a change in standing orders. The status quo suppresses different viewpoints and weakens one of the key features of our Westminster system, that of the opposition to provide principled and clear oversight of the Government. Feminist Initiative has openness and inclusivity as key values and it is vital that these are represented at the heart of politics.