Several years ago, No Right Turn ran a "progressive bills thinktank". The idea was to kick around some ideas for legislation, in the hope of eventually selling them to politicians. Not big ideas - that would require serious policy and drafting work - but small, bite-sized ones, ideally suited to become a Member's Bill.
This site is intended to be an ongoing version of that post: a permanent collaborative tool for the development of progressive, left-wing legislation; an example of grassroots democracy in action.
The process is simple:
- Pick a topic, and start a page for it e.g. increase the minimum wage. Put the line "[[module Comments hideForm="true"]]" at the bottom of the page so people can comment on it.
- Use that page and the attached discussion forum to develop your idea and discuss it with other users.
- Draft the bill on a new page e.g. Crimes (Blasphemy Repeal) Amendment Bill
- When you're happy, find an MP to sponsor it (the difficult bit)
Milton Friedman famously said "When [a] crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around." The same applies to politics-as-usual. So, let's make some ideas, and leave them around for MPs to trip over.
Success stories
The subjects of some bills have already been addressed by legislation:
Resources
- WikiDot documentation
- An introduction to Member's Bills
- How to draft a bill
- Site philosophy, or "what are we doing here"
- http://www.legislation.govt.nz
- http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ
