On their conscience…
Last year a bill went before the House seeking to return the minimum legal purchase age for alcohol to 20.
After extensive debate in the media, polls, lobbying and many arguments for and against, the die was cast when, on 8 November, 2007, politicians voted against the amendment.
It was the 56th time politicians had debated an issue relating to alcohol and voted as a matter of conscience.
Under our parliamentary system, most votes in Parliament are determined largely by the collective decisions of the parties.
However, on a range of moral or social legislation they are able to cast a personal vote, otherwise known as a “conscience” vote.
In recent times issues that have been the subject of conscience votes, other than the sale and consumption of alcohol, have included capital punishment, homosexual law reform, prostitution, gambling, adoption, abortion, pornography, and smoking in public places (see table).
David Lindsey, a doctoral candidate, University of Auckland*, said conscience voting was an indirect consequence of New Zealand’s long tradition of government by party. While there have always been groups of politicians who form themselves into voting alliances, prior to the development of the party system these loyalties were usually informal and flexible.“
“Following the development of the party system, it became increasingly difficult to get elected to Parliament without first becoming a member of a political party,” Mr Lindsey said.
“Decisions about how to vote in Parliament were largely controlled by the party rather than the individual member. As a result, MPs who had strong convictions on an issue, or who wished to represent the views of their constituents as opposed to those of their party, often found themselves at odds with their party’s parliamentary leadership.”
The first time conscience voting was used was in the 1870s, to legislate the sale and consumption of alcohol.
Although most MPs at the time agreed that alcohol was a disruptive influence on society, they disagreed on what to do about it, Mr Lindsey said.
To a considerable extent, the debate reflected differing opinions about the role of the state, with some MPs arguing that government had no role in regulating what was considered a private matter, while others took the view that it must intervene for the protection of vulnerable citizens and the greater good of the whole community.
“As you might expect, given the controversy surrounding alcohol consumption in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the lines of dispute were drawn between the prohibitionists, the moderates, and those opposed to any form of restriction,” Mr Lindsey said.
“Conscience voting was restricted to issues surrounding the use of alcohol for the next 60 years, until the 1930s, when its scope began to widen slowly.
“At this time tensions were beginning to develop between the policies of the two major parties and the personal moral values of some individual MPs. For the most controversial matters there was a need for a safety valve and following the Second World War it increasingly took the form of the conscience vote.“During this period there was also a decline in the relative authority of institutional religion, allowing both social mores to shift and creating a moral vacuum that Parliament was increasingly called upon to fill,” Mr Lindsey said.
These trends led to the use of more conscience votes across a wider range of issues, to the extent that between 1873 and 2007, 131 conscience votes were held – all but eight conducted since 1945.
Mr Lindsey said that these days parties usually allowed conscience voting for four reasons:
- the issue at hand is not one the party has, or can be expected to have, a policy on
- an issue is so sensitive to the electorate that it is desirable that it be divorced from party politics
- the consciences of a proportion of MPs would be affronted if party whips were applied
- it is an issue that is traditionally treated as a conscience matter
“Parties may, however, also find its use convenient for political reasons. For example, a party may wish to avoid the appearance of disunity among their members, or they may see benefit in appearing to take the high moral ground on an issue by treating it as a conscience matter.
“A government may also perceive it as a way of garnering support from across the House over pieces of legislation it may not be sure it will win. The decision about whether to grant their MPs a free or conscience vote will vary from party to party and issue to issue. The Smoke-Free Environment Amendment Bill 2003, for
example, was a conscience vote for some parties, notably New Zealand First and United Future, but not for others.”
Ross Bell, Executive Director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, said it was important to note that there is no parliamentary rule that the conscience vote needs to be used for any legislation. “All parties are too timid to come up with decent alcohol policy and take a full party position. Parties are hiding behind the conscience vote.
“It is true to say, however, that in the recent past there have been cases where minor parties have been brave enough to make a party policy decision.”
So does the conscience vote do us more harm than good?
Certainly the New Zealand Drug Foundation believes the approach is very harmful and it has a stated policy calling for the abolition of conscience votes on alcohol related policies. “Parties should be forming policies based on evidence, instead of hiding behind the conscience vote as an excuse to not show leadership,” Mr Bell said.
“There is a ton of research and examples to show what good policies around alcohol should look like. This issue is so important parties need to form policies based on the evidence and these policies should go through rigorous policy review.” Professor Doug Sellman, Director of the National Addictions Centre, University of Otago, Christchurch, agreed: “At best conscience voting on issues relating to alcohol and other drugs is a way for parties to abrogate their responsibilities. At worst it could reflect the fear Parliament has of the big corporations. If the latter is so, it is something we should all be worried about,” he said.
“When a government resorts to conscience voting it is not governing. Alcohol is New Zealanders’ favourite drug, yet governments haven’t yet been able to deliver policies to deal with its harms effectively. It is even worse with other drugs. Tobacco is the only substance that is beginning to be managed in a rational way, to good effect.
“Without rational public discussion about drugs, including the various political parties clearly stating their positions, we are not going to get rational drug policy. Conscience voting hasn’t delivered good public policy to date on what is a very serious issue for this country,” Professor Sellman said.
Bruce Robertson, Chief Executive of the Hospitality Association of New Zealand, didn’t disagree. He said he had concerns about the much higher propensity for quirky and impractical amendments that can occur on the floor of the House. “When you have Members of Parliament moving changes to wording or policy in the House and if it is popular it can win the vote without any rigorous analysis. There is no ability to put it in front of a select committee. “Conscience votes can be fraught in terms of making consistent, quality legislation. This applies outside of alcohol-related issues as well, a recent example being the shop trading hours legislation.”
However, on a more positive note, Mr Robertson said that with the 1999 Sale of Liquor Act there was significant cross-party work done to create consistency. “The select committee did an excellent job in looking at the options and scenarios available and providing the House with pathways for consistent legislation for the option chosen. They did a good job in helping Parliament produce some legislation that was consistent and practicable.”
Gerard Vaughan, CEO of ALAC, said there was always a tension in debates about alcohol use between individual choice, and the extent to which people were prepared to have laws that restricted their freedoms around when, where and how much they could drink.
“There is a level of openness around the debate in a conscience vote because the view of each MP is declared. On the other hand, the final decision rests on individuals which means that wider social impacts may or may not be considered.
“Our drinking culture means that there is significant harm to our society from the way we drink and whatever procedure Parliament decides to follow, our law making processes need to produce a cohesive alcohol policy and legislation that works together to reduce the social impact of alcohol use.
“Our policies and our legislation have to deliver a comprehensive framework that enables all aspects to work in a supportive and coordinated way towards less social harm. “What is useful is vigorous cross-party debate around what is good policy to have about alcohol issues. “As it currently stands with the conscience voting on issues relating to alcohol, the decisions are heavily influenced by the norms and standards that are currently prevalent within society. Therefore it is even more important to raise New Zealanders’ awareness of our drinking culture and the issues it presents us with, so that society itself will demand change. He believes the challenge for ALAC in this environment is to have a voice in the alcohol debate to increase the chances that laws are made based on evidence of what reduces alcohol related harm.
Despite valid arguments on both sides of the debate over the benefits of conscience voting, an intangible benefit is that it heightens interest in Parliament and in the issue being debated, Mr Lindsey said.
“The sense that the outcome of a legislative vote is not a foregone conclusion, and an intuitive belief that the range of public opinion is somehow better represented during conscience votes, ensures that citizens, organisations and lobbyists, not to mention the media, retain a heightened interest in proceedings when conscience votes are held.”
Certainly the issue of increasing the purchasing age and the arguments for and against were debated by the public and in the media. The debate helped achieve widespread recognition of the problem, and went some way to promoting the fact that raising the purchasing age was not the sole answer to the problems of youth drinking.
A result of the keenness of the debate on the issues surrounding young people drinking is the review, which will look specifically at the effectiveness of current restrictions on the sale and supply of liquor to people under 18.
Mr Lindsey said conscience voting was somewhat unique among parliamentary procedures, in that it is maintained and shaped by expectations rather than regulations. While its basis is political, its operation is heavily influenced by the norms, debates, and standards prevalent within society at any given point in time. As such, it is subject to evolution and development as society itself evolves, and over the past half-century the subjects receiving conscience votes have gradually widened. It is therefore to be expected that over the next 50 years the subjects of conscience voting will change further.
“The unpredictability of the outcome always provides an incentive for parliamentarians to weigh up the importance of their own personal views compared to those of their constituents, however that might be defined in this era of list and electorate MPs, and the members of the party they have been elected to serve.”
*Articles by David Lindsey on conscience voting are: ’A Brief History of Conscience Voting in New Zealand’, Australasian Parliamentary Review, Vol 23, No. 1, 2008; ‘Conscience Voting’, in Raymond Miller (ed.), New Zealand Government and Politics, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 4th Edition, 2006.
This article first appeared in alcohol.org.nz Vol 8 No 4 April 2008
April 23 2008 04:23 pm | Conscience Vote
Viola Palmer for GALA on 05 May 2008 at 4:15 pm #
Conscience voting dates back to the time when drinking alcohol was considered a moral issue. Today most people regard it as a health issue.
In the 1800s and early 1900s there was very little research on the social and economic effects on the community, and the social and health effects on the individual of drinking.
Today there is masses of research evidence on the public health, individual health and social effects of alcohol. Some MPs may not be aware of this and are thus easily picked off by the liquor industry and persuaded to vote according to ‘their conscience’.
Political parties have the resources to benefit from this knowledge and to develop alcohol policies which will provide the best results for both the individual and the community.
It is time conscience voting on alcohol legislation was done away with , as it has been for many other issues.
Isa Timai on 14 May 2008 at 1:21 pm #
I think that no matter what the legal age is to purchase alcohol is, youth will still be able to get hold of alcohol somehow. Being a youth myself, I have witnessed youth asking their family members to purchase alcohol for them, and their family members willingly agree.
Taking the age up to 20 will make youth devise different ways of obtaining alcohol, some of these ways may be to committ other crimes like theft and assult.