‘A do-nothing Government?’ Lowest number of laws enacted in a first year this century

by TesticulusOrentus

30 comments
  1. Had a quick skim through, and honestly it’s not exactly revolutionary that the most bills passed was in 2020 and 2011, like 2011 being the middle of the recession and the formation of a new government, and 2020 being covid it doesn’t take a genius to see that a lot of bills would be passed in that period

  2. It has felt like nothing has happened.

    Everything substantial is a big policy announcement which ultimately turns out to be a repackaged list of previously known policies, which comes out months late, presented by an anonymous minister.

    FFG has no intention of easing the housing disaster they caused.

  3. Thats a good thing. Laws should only be enacted to fix issues or improve situations or combat new situations. Only in a dysfunctional hung parliament is it a red flag. In a normal functional multi party system where a coalition is in control, the fewer new laws the better.

    They shouldnt just be making new laws for the sake of it & to look busy. Its a daft hot take to complain a gov. isnt creating more & more red tap & hoops for the average citizen to climb through every year.

    Some of the people doing journalism in this country really would be contributing more to society by being on the dole.

  4. I wouldn’t use Bills as the metric, but this is absolutely and without question, a “do nothing” government. Because this is a coalition of two major parties that essentially cooperated to ensure a continuity of power, without ever needing to make major changes to our failing structures.

    Pick a sector in our society, and it’s held together with tape if it’s not already bursting at the seams through inaction. Childcare, housing, defence, policing, prisons, teaching, infrastructure, transport etc. etc. And in almost all cases, it’s because the ruling cabal has been given zero incentive to try, or even look to try.

    They’re the final stage of _that_ public sector office drone: doing the absolute bare minimum, knowing there’s no real way of getting the sack for wilful disinterest.

  5. What have they actually achieved since the recent GE. There has been no changes made to the housing crisis or hospitals. People are actually worse off now than before. Electricity prices rising. Grocery prices rising. No reduction in childcare costs. Homelessness keeps rising.

  6. Harsh, they were the government who introduced the fantastic ‘**right to ask** to work from home’.

  7. Scraped or delayed every rail project, some of which were ready to start immediately. Then this morning an announced u-turn on reorganising the road safety authority. Just commit to something even if its shit, just show some action for once

  8. They certainly got the photo ops this year though. I’ve seen nothing but self congratulatory posts on all social media platforms from government ministers for the smallest and most basic “achievements”, like a new lift at a train station for example.

    It’s genuinely embarrassing how we much we still champion mediocrity and the parochial mindset.

  9. Is it actually difficult in practice to impose laws preventing foreign interest from purchasing property in a country? Genuine question. Would that be a good thing?

    Not sure how much vulture funds or whatever contribute to housing shortage so may be a drop in the well. But creating laws that give prio to natives. That a thing?

  10. Worst government in the history of the state. Jobs for the boys is all, Simon Harris is a useless cunt.

  11. If you have the two majority parties historically in opposition, now in a coalition, then they soon learn that they can stay in power… So naturally, less gets done.

    They don’t want to expose themselves so again, very little is done. The status quo should be as the situation was when they came to this arrangement.

  12. Don’t worry we have Simple Simon doing our maths. Couldn’t even finish college but running the country’s finances. All this after he overseen poor Harvey suffer to death. No wonder half the youth have left this joke of a country I’d be gone too if I could.

  13. I’d be happy enough if they implemented the laws we have 🤷

    You know, tax evasion, red light running, access to education & health care. Just the basics really.

  14. What a stupid metric. Most people are coming to consensus the west has become completely over regulated yet we want more?

  15. You do get the impression these lot achieve very little. Any time there is public outrage about something, they hold a press conference re-announcing things that they previously had press conferences announcing before. They produce transport plans, and then the most recent National Development Plan actually delayed many public transport projects, but the Minister immediately came out and said “these delayed projects might be given priority”. Make up your mind.

    The recent incident with the drones flying around the navy ship. They immediately held a press conference announcing military funding and projects that had already been announced. I don’t think there was anything new at all. It’s all just performance.

    Here is one to keep your eye one: Prison spaces. They haven’t announced any new prisons in years. We are already seeing headlines about overcrowding. They will seemingly sit on their hands until a Prime Time Investigates episode embarrasses them enough to do something about it, then we’ll be waiting years for any project to be completed. The population is growing fast – why are they never able to stay ahead of these issues?

  16. Now hold on a minute. they’ve managed to outsource loads to the private sector so public funds are being spent on all those issues. It’s just going straight into private profits okay. What’s the big deal with that?

  17. Can we have law reform and spike island to be reopened as we need another prison

  18. What do you expect when you have Lowry and his con men in positions of power?

    FF and FG will give anything to stay in power.

  19. Well that’s because they spent the first 5 months bickering about who gets to speak a couple minutes longer

  20. Hey now, at 1am the other morning they passed thr arbitration amendment act which will allow them get around the supreme court ruling that CETA would be unconstitutional. So they can have the way for large international investment funds to sue us if they did make any laws that would help people and ”negatively impact profits”.

    And this week theyre going to try shove through a bill to remove the triple lock which will allow them to sign us up to wars. They’ve also passed laws to spend Billions with arms manufacturs while still refusing to pay our defence forces a proper wage.

    Ya cant expect them to do more than that can ya?

  21. The isn’t a negative, don’t need more laws, we need infrastructure projects.

  22. Wish they’d outlaw complaining about local chippers that everyone already knows are crap. 

  23. Why bother doing anything when the sheep will continue voting you in regardless?

  24. How many more laws do we really need though? I know there’s important stuff but there’s no shortage of silly laws that never get enforced or just seem to be another form of revenue collection

  25. In a first year this century? That’s gotta only be a handful of governments to compare it to, pretty niche..

  26. On the plus side, this might actually result in a change at the next G.E

  27. Why do we expect ANYTHING to be done when we vote the same crowd in every time. They have an easy road into government, and just sit back and rack in tax receipts like it’s no one’s business and nothing to show for it. 

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