National MP Greg Fleming at Parliament in Wellington in 2023. Photo / Marty Melville
One of the MPs behind a new cross-party law targeting modern slavery is hopeful their collaborative approach might provide a blueprint for a less partisan Parliament.
First-term National MP Greg Fleming teamed up with Labour’s Camilla Belich last month to pass new legislation incentivising large companies to ensure their supply chains do not use slave labour.
The law change was notable for being the first time standing order 288 had been invoked – a rule that allows members to bypass the usual ballot system and fast-track legislation if they can get the backing of 61 MPs.
In an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night, Fleming said he has “genuine” hope that Parliament might become a more collaborative place.
“There are a lot of things about Parliament in these first couple of years that I’ve come to really appreciate and enjoy, but there’s also a number of things that really frustrate me,” he told Cowan.
“Some of those things I look at and go, this just doesn’t have to be this way; it’s only this way because everyone chooses to continue to make it that way ... Parliament makes its own rules, literally – it not only makes the laws for everyone else, it makes its own rules – so we could choose to change things.”
Fleming, who is the MP for Auckland electorate Maungakiekie, said the “enlightened Parliament” that put standing order 288 into place seven years ago would never have imagined it would take so long for it to be invoked.
But now that it has, Fleming is hopeful it might be used a lot more often. And he told Real Life he’s got his eye on adjusting another part of the legislative process, too: the Committee of the Whole House.
This is the stage at which all MPs get an opportunity to debate a proposed law change clause by clause in Parliament. It allows members who weren’t part of the select committee the opportunity to put their ideas forward.
But Fleming believes it’s not functioning to the best of its collaborative potential.
“I remember sitting [in the Committee stage] early on as an MP and listening to Arena Williams, another Labour MP friend of mine, put up an idea around a particular piece of legislation that my Government was passing,” he recalled to Cowan.
“And I remember thinking, ‘That’s actually quite good. Gosh, I wonder if we can incorporate that amendment’.
“But there was no serious consideration of her amendment because … that part of the legislative process is viewed by the Government as an obstacle that we need to get through in order to get the bill passed into law.
“And by the Opposition, it’s just viewed as an opportunity to filibuster and slow the Government down.”
Fleming’s quest for greater collaboration isn’t just limited to the corridors of Parliament.
A te reo Māori speaker, he is also deeply invested in the reconciliation of Māori and Pākehā; in his maiden speech two years ago he spoke of his dream that New Zealand’s bicentenary in 2040 would be characterised not by “tears of lament, but tears of joy”.
Having attended the Waitangi service last week, Fleming told Real Life there’s a disconnect between the anger we see on TV and the reality at backroom hui, and that he’s “genuinely increasingly hopeful that we’re making progress for the country”.
“The meeting this year between Government ministers and iwi chairs was so constructive. I’ve not seen our ministers that excited in a long time – just a sense of like, ‘wow, we, we really are moving here’,” he said.
“Another one for me is the increasing prevalence of and confidence in te reo Māori. Something as simple as sitting in some of the pōwhiri and realising how many people on both sides of the marae don’t need translators. Just the whole wairua, the whole spirit of the place.
“We’re 14 years away now from celebrating the 200th anniversary, and there are thousands of people who are asking the question deeply and honestly and constructively: what are we going to be celebrating there, and what is it we need to do now?”
Fleming says by the 200-year anniversary of New Zealand, he hopes iwi and hapū have genuine tino rangatiratanga – that they “would have the resources and the wherewithal to be actually looking after themselves”.
“I’ve listened 100 times to Bishop Vercoe’s address at the 150th anniversary in 1990. In that, he’s lamenting where we as a country are not, but at the same time he’s so hopeful about what is still possible – and he ends with the words ‘but let us sit and listen to one another’.
“And in the last week I’ve seen the genuine listening, people actually hearing each other in between all the yelling.”
Fleming says he hopes in 14 years that the treaty settlement process might be complete, enabling us to “look forward” as a nation.
“We’re never forgetting our past. Obviously, we’re entirely informed by our past and always should be…[but] politically, economically, it’s really important that we complete the settlement process so that the national conversations we’re having are about how we’re building together, not about how we’re continuing to address the things of the past.
“I do think at the moment, too much of a national conversation is backward-focused … we are in this in-between phase at the moment, and I genuinely believe over the next six to seven years, we’re going to take a significant step to being forward-focused.”
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