This week MPs discussed Stuart Nash's loss of a ministerial warrant for an hour. It may have looked like a political pile-on, but in reality it was Parliament doing exactly what it is designed for - scrutiny of the Executive.
You probably already know that Stuart Nash lost his role as Minister of Police on Wednesday. It was hard to miss.
There are two aspects of it that are worth noting. Something trivial but structurally important, and something quite crucial. Let's quickly be pedants first.
Some discussion of the affair suggested that the PM can sack ministers. That's not quite how it works. Anyway, in this case Mr Nash jumped rather than being pushed, but let's talk more generally.
The Prime Minister is the boss of the other ministers, but he isn't really their employer (to use a terrible metaphor). The person who gives ministers their warrants, and the only person who can take them away is the Sovereign, or more usually the Governor General in their stead. So the Governor General removed the Minister of Police.
The reason we give credit for this sort of thing to the Prime Minister is that the Sovereign acts on the advice of the PM. It's not likely the Sovereign would demure. Doing so would likely be a much larger crisis.
An unexpected 'debate'
As a result of Stuart Nash quite extraordinarily outing himself as having broken the rules for ministers (and the particularly strict rules for Police ministers) the House paused its usual business on Wednesday and spent an hour debating it.
'Debate' is a misnomer because no-one was arguing this was okay. Despite the fact that opposition MPs are always calling on police ministers to 'step in and do something', everyone also agrees that following that advice is a very bad idea, and indeed can be illegal.
Wednesday's debate was not an urgent debate (of the kind that the Speaker can agree to). The resignation timing would have made that wait a day.
Instead MPs agreed unanimously to add a debate to the Order Paper. Yes, unanimously. That means that all the Labour MPs agreed along with the opposition that this act of their own colleague was a thing worth some extra and harsh scrutiny.
Pile-on or not?
And here's the main reason to focus on this topic today.
Listening to opposition MPs in the debate you might conclude that this was a political pile-on. It wasn't really, or not entirely.
Labour MP's were in agreement with ACT and National ones about the fault and the philosophy behind it (Green and Te Te Pāti Māori MPs didn't speak). …