Welcome to the NZ Progressive Bills Project

Several years ago, No Right Turn ran a "progressive bills thinktank". The idea was to kick around some ideas for legislation, in the hope of eventually selling them to politicians. Not big ideas - that would require serious policy and drafting work - but small, bite-sized ones, ideally suited to become a Member's Bill.

This site is intended to be an ongoing version of that post: a permanent collaborative tool for the development of progressive, left-wing legislation; an example of grassroots democracy in action.

The process is simple:

  1. Pick a topic, and start a page for it e.g. increase the minimum wage. Put the line "[[module Comments hideForm="true"]]" at the bottom of the page so people can comment on it.
  2. Use that page and the attached discussion forum to develop your idea and discuss it with other users.
  3. Draft the bill on a new page e.g. Crimes (Blasphemy Repeal) Amendment Bill
  4. When you're happy, find an MP to sponsor it (the difficult bit)

Milton Friedman famously said "When [a] crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around." The same applies to politics-as-usual. So, let's make some ideas, and leave them around for MPs to trip over.

Success stories

The subjects of some bills have already been addressed by legislation:

Resources

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