Tuesday 17 December 2013

LOCAL GOVERNMENT MINISTER'S 2014 PRIORITY

Minute of Meeting 17 December 2014

Subject Recall Legislation

Attending

The Minister, Head of Department (Local Government), Parliamentary Counsel Office and Head of PM's Department.

Determined

The Minister shall introduce legislation as a matter of urgency providing for the recall and subsequent new election for any elected local government position.

The legislation will be drafted to achieve the following objective;

To allow voters recall a politician if they get the support of at least 10 per cent of the people who voted in the last election. The politician would be removed from office and a by-election would be held. The recalled politician could still run as a candidate.
There was general discussion as to how Central Government can determine whether a Minister should resign and a consensus emerged that PMs can act to dismiss a Minister and have done so (refer examples below) however no such ability is apparent at Local Government level and given the method of voting at Local Government level and the disparate allegiances of Local Government politicians then recall legislation was preferred as a means to remedy contentious behaviour by a Local Government politician.
Ministers Dissmissals/Resignations
Nick SmithPhil HeatleyPansy WongRichard WorthDavid Benson PopeLianne DalzielRuth Dyson and Dover Samuels


2 comments:

homepaddock said...

Great idea - it could be called the Brown Law.

Angry Tory said...

No need for a law change. The local Government act already gives the Minister the power to appoint a commissioner (as in ECanz) or to hold an election.

If the councillors voting tomorrow had guts, they would ask the minister to intervene. If they did that. Len would be gone.

Under current legislation, the council can have Len gone tomorrow. They just have to have the guts to pull the trigger - to really want him gone, rather than just playing politics.