No-one seemed too excited at the time, with Leader of the House Hipkins admitting later that he had not even read the amendment fully before committing Labour’s support to it. As no political party is currently proposing or has previously proposed the privatisation of water assets, the Greens’ amendment seemed arcane and not worth worrying about.
Things changed over the next couple of days, however, with the country’s constitutional lawyers and academics quickly shouting “constitutional outrage” in the loudest terms. The outrage was directed not so much at the issue of water privatisation but at the fact that the long-standing principle, arising from the supremacy of Parliament, that in general one Parliament cannot bind its successor was being breached.
