Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: It's a hard no to four-year terms for me

I think it is significant that David Seymour has walked away from supporting his own bill to bring in four-year terms for the Government.

He was the one who introduced this bill - but he's now pulled ACT's support. Every other party in parliament appears to still back it, but he's pulled support because the safeguards that he wanted are gone.

His idea was that we increase the terms from three to four years. So you vote the Government and you get three years - and now he wants to make it four years, which basically means giving the Government more power.

But he was only okay with that if we balanced it out by taking away some power. And his idea was to allow the opposition parties to control every single select committee, giving them the power.

But that part of the plan, the select committee part, has been removed.

So David Seymour doesn't support his own idea anymore, which frankly, I think is a good idea, because he has ended up exactly where I have been this entire time.

No to four-year terms unless there are new limits, because as it is, Governments in this country do not have much in the way of limits.

If they want to pass a law, they can - they can do it under urgency if they want to. They can announce and pass it in literally the same day. That is what happened with the pay equity law. Did you like that? You want some more of that? Because that would happen with four years.

This is why Jeffrey Palmer said that we have the fastest law in the West. Other countries have ways to limit or control or check the power of the executive. They have upper houses, they have senates, whatever. We've got nothing.

Given that everyone else in parliament seems to support this, it seems to me there's a fair chance this is going to go to referendum for us to decide, perhaps at the next election.

And people who want four years will tell you that you must say yes because Governments don't have enough time to do what they want, which is utter bollocks, because they do have enough time.

I've realized in the last couple of years, it's not because of lack of time they don't get things done, it's because of a lack of will. This Government had enough time to make changes to the supermarkets and make changes to the banks and make changes to the energy sector.

They've talked about it enough - but they haven't done it because they don't want to do it, because it takes balls.

I don't want four years because two blocks of three years of Jacinda Ardern's lunatic Labour administration was enough. Can you imagine how broke the country would be after two blocks of four years?

Unless there are new safeguards brought in - and there are no safeguards proposed. So it's a hard no.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.