Anarchia

This is an interesting question, raised initially by me here then followed by Matt and span.

Now, some further thoughts from me on the matter.

Matt states

however I feel that they are necessary in that they free MPs from party discipline.
…
We might see ambiguous keywords such as ‘Christian’ or ‘ex-business owner’ from an MP’s profile and draw our conclusions, but ultimately, we have little knowledge for how they will act on conscience matters.

and Jules commented

I agree with you for minor parties which have a more cohesive focus than some of the bigger ones. From my experience within the Labour Party I feel that concience voting is necciciary as it is the only way of putting forward all the veiws of the membership on contravercial, especialy social, issues.

To that, I replied that all Labour list MP’s, and the majority of electorate ones, were voted in because they were Labour, not because of their personal political beliefs. I agree with Matt when he says that ultimately, we cannot predict where someone will sit on any given conscience vote, and that gives an even bigger reason to scrap them.

If I was to give my vote to Labour (and I won’t, but lets play the hypothetical), I would expect the list MP’s (who I had directly helped to get in to parliament) to vote for the CUB, in accordance with Labour’s self-proclaimed status as a left-of-centre socially aware party. As it happened, out of the 7 Labour list MPs, only Dr Ashraf Choudhary abstained, and all others voted for, but when the bill is as close as it has been (and I believe it will only get closer), every vote counts immensely. If Dr Choudhary’s abstention ends up being the deciding vote in the final count, I, as a hypothetical Labour voter, would have every right to feel aggrieved. Of course, had the vote gone along party lines, Labour’s 52, the Greens 9 and Progressive Coalition’s 2 would have been enough to do the business.

Span provides an insiders perspective on the Alliance’s policy:

In the Alliance the situation that was being advocated back in 2000 was for MPs to be allowed a free vote on issues determined conscience issues by the House when there was no party policy, or party policy was unclear.

If there are going to continue to be conscience votes, this is in my view the only satisfactory way to go about it – you follow party policy where it exists, and only vote on personal or electorate (where relevant) beliefs where party policy does not exist.

This morning in the Dominion Post, there was a letter from former Governer-General Sir Michael Hardie Boys (who also happens to be an old boy of my former school, Wellington College) which got me thinking about something that had never crossed my mind previously. As Stuff does not post it’s letters online, I’ll type it up here:

Though much is said about the moral issues raised by the Civil Union Bill, there’s been little discussion about MPs’ responsibilities in exercising a conscience vote.
Our conscience usually reflects our individual philosophy. That, in turn, might have been formulated by our own inclinations and desires. Because MPs were, for the most part, elected for their politicial views, not their personal philosophies, we need to ask if, on a conscience issue, we should expect them to vote according to those philosophies or according to their perception of community attitudes and the wider public interest, for example.

The rest of the letter goes on to talk about requiring a special majority (Sir Michael suggests 60%) for moral conscience issues and is not overly relevant.

The very question of conscience voting is, in my view, an important issue which needs to be looked at.

As an example, if I was to vote for the Greens with my party vote, I would except that whatever list candidate I helped to elect would be in line with Green party policy. With a conscience vote, an environmentally green but socially conservative Green MP could easily vote against something like the Civil Union bill, when he had realistically been elected with the expectation of being socially on the left side of the spectrum.

I fail to see any particular benefit to conscience voting – as Sir Michael said, MPs are elected for their political views, not personal philosophies.