Conscience Voting In New Zealand

Abstract

In New Zealand, political colleagues agreeing to disagree during legislative voting is called conscience voting. It is applied to some of the most contentious issues to come before parliament, and the legislation that results often has far-reaching implications on all citizens. This combination of contention and disagreement within a party has, over time, resulted in a parliamentary voting procedure with identifiable causes, patterns and protocols. Although conscience voting is rooted in the Westminster style of parliament and also exists in other countries, New Zealand has developed its own style that reflects the uniqueness of its culture and the hybrid nature of its political system. This thesis unpacks the concept of conscience voting by investigating its role in New Zealand's parliamentary democracy: how and why it developed, the reasons it is used, the procedural framework within which it exists in New Zealand, and the specific issues faced by both parties and politicians when confronted with conscience matters. In a departure from most previous studies on this subject that have analysed the patterns of conscience votes themselves, this thesis is an exploration of conscience voting as a parliamentary concept. In particular, it does not view conscience voting as a series of unrelated events but as the result of a mechanism that has become institutionalised - formally and informally - after long practice. Conscience voting became increasingly common after World War Two, and the expectations of MPs that intra-party dissent would be handled with a conscience vote grew along with it. Despite constituting just 5% of all bills, by the 1980s the expectations surrounding the practice had grown sufficiently powerful that, as a concept, conscience voting had taken on a life of its own. Parties no longer solely determined whether a conscience vote would be held. Remarkably, the conventions and protocols that govern conscience voting are largely unwritten, with their understanding being passed from one set of parliamentarians to the next through a process of enculturation. Untangling this process and its implications is the purpose of this thesis.