Kerre Woodham: Why is there a reluctance to tidy things up?

Still more election news. It just gets weirder every day really.

The death of a respected and much loved community member in Port Waikato means a quirk of our election process will be triggered. The ACT party's Neil Christensen has died just a week before the election. And that means the electorate vote in Port Waikato will not count on Election Day, however, the party vote will still count.

Now a by-election will be held after the election. That will mean there are 121 MPs in parliament after the by-election, instead of the usual 120. It's an overhang. Why? Well Otago University law professor Andrew Geddis attempted to explain it to Mike on the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning.

Andrew Geddis: What happens when MPs ‘entrench’ legislation, and why does it matter?

A newly added provision to the three waters bill is a potentially momentous change to how law is made, explains Andrew Geddis.

On Wednesday night last week, something very unusual happened while parliament was busy making law. MPs from the Green and Labour parties banded together to make it much more difficult for a part of the government’s controversial “three waters” policy to ever be changed, or even removed altogether. Should future MPs want to smooth the way towards privatising the government’s new bodies for managing our water resources, they’ll have to get 60% support in parliament to do so.