14 Feb 2019

Select committee submitters lose out in political spat

From Morning Report, 7:42 am on 14 February 2019

People who'd spent weeks preparing to make submissions to a parliamentary select committee are furious a spat between MPs denied them the opportunity on Wednesday.

The Finance and Expenditure select committee was due to begin at 8am but was short one Labour MP, after one called in sick and the replacement was 30 seconds late.

National MPs walked out in protest and that meant the hearing couldn't proceed.

Laura O'Connell Rapira was due to make a submission to the committee on behalf of ActionStation.

"Our submission was collated on behalf of about 8,000 New Zealanders and the submission was focused on calling for full funding of sexual violence support and prevention agencies," she tells Guyon Espiner.

She describes the frustration of not getting to officially address the select committee. "It's a great shame to see the process eroded like this."

"It looks like partisan politics got in the way."