Where's Rodney?

People were justifiably outraged in the 1996 Parliamentary term, when Alliance MP Alamein Kopu notoriously abandoned her party mid-term, gave her proxy to the minority National government, and was never seen around Parliament again (despite continuing to collect her MP's salary). Now, it seems to be happening again - and the culprit this time is the perkbuster himself, Rodney Hide.

Going through Hansard, it appears that Rodney has only been present in the chamber for two of the seven sitting days so far available on the web - and on one of them, he was only present for Question Time. Heather Roy is of course off training for the Territorials, with the Speaker's permission.

But Rodney has no such excuse. And his absence causes some problems for ACT - because as a small party with only two members, when he's not there, they can't vote. As a result, ACT has failed to vote on at least seven pieces of legislation, including the Criminal Procedure Bill (which would allow majority verdicts from juries, and allow them to be dispensed with altogether in some cases) and the Parental Leave and Employment Protection (Paid Parental Leave for Self-Employed Persons) Amendment Bill (which I'd have thought would have been of some interest to ACT's business-backers).

Going back further, while there wasn't much Parliamentary business in April, ACT did manage to entirely miss the Appropriation (2004/05 Financial Review) Bill - which as a matter of confidence, you'd have thought they'd consider to be important.

In addition to not voting, so far as I can see, Rodney hasn't taken a speaking call on legislation so far this month. He's participated in Question Time (to the extent allowed by ACT's diminished allocation of questions and supplementaries), but he has failed to exercise his entitlement to speak on legislation. So much for "mak[ing] sure [Epsom's] views are heard in Parliament"...

And all of this is so he can "raise his profile" by participating in a TV game-show...

But the most ironic point of all (given Rodney's proclivity for "perk-busting") is that we're paying him for this. As far as I am aware, Rodney continues to collect his Parliamentary salary, in spite of the fact that he says nothing and hardly ever votes. If that's not a perk that deserves busting, I don't know what is.

ENDS

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