KEY POINTS:
A string of procedural glitches has National's running of the new Parliament getting off to a pretty shambolic start.
That is National's problem. And the Leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee, who made one of the mistakes in not speaking to a motion he had just moved, would
have few quibbles about accepting responsibility for all of them.
However, Labour and the Greens were yesterday asking some more worrying questions about the minority Government's management of Parliament's agenda, claiming it was not just shambolic, but shoddy and anti-democratic to boot. If that is the case, then it is everyone's problem.
The first hint things were not normal came on Tuesday afternoon when Brownlee put Parliament into urgency to debate legislation National wants to pass before Christmas.
Instead of the standard practice of listing the names of the bills to be introduced and passed through all their stages during the extended sitting hours of urgency, Brownlee cited only the topics which the new bills canvassed. He then refused to hand the Opposition parties advance copies of any of the bills - which cover National's tax package and KiwiSaver changes, sentencing practices, bail laws, education standards and National's 90-day probation period for new employees - until just before their being debated in Parliament.
With the exception of the tax and KiwiSaver measure, none of the bills could be deemed urgent. It is reprehensible that these measures are not going before a select committee so they can be subject to public submissions. National is rushing them into law solely because they feature in the party's "100-day action plan".
Furthermore, failing to supply advance copies to opponents until the last minute inevitably means the legislation will get even less scrutiny.
National counters that the content of the bills has either already been subject to select committee scrutiny in the form of private member's bills which were defeated at later stages of their parliamentary life or was well-flagged before the election.
More pertinently, when it comes to advance copies, National says its hands are tied by Parliament's arcane rules which do not allow the Government at this stage to "publish" bills before they are formally introduced into the House. Moreover, National says Labour is well aware of this.
The bickering is as much about who controls Parliament as anything else. With early indications Labour and the Greens are shaping as a strong Opposition, it is vital National shows the Government is in charge.
National's hard line yesterday followed a two-hour Labour filibuster on a minor procedural motion the day before. National suspects Labour wants to force proceedings into Saturday, thus allowing it to claim victory if all the bills National wants to put forward have not been passed by that evening when the House is obliged to rise regardless of the urgency motion.
But National has to be careful. It is not advisable to box Opposition parties into a corner where they string things out even more. Likewise, it is a fine line between an Opposition properly scrutinising legislation and opposing simply for opposing's sake.
To end the brinkmanship and allow everyone to keep face, there was some talk yesterday that National - having made its point - might soon table all the pending bills.
What is not in question is that Labour MPs - particularly the previous Leader of the House, Michael Cullen - have delighted in watching National stew in its own procedural gaffes. That must be of some worry to National. The hiccups do not matter in themselves. Cumulatively, however, they reinforce the perception of a Government still on its "trainer wheels" - as the Prime Minister surprisingly admitted on Tuesday.
