The Muster- Joseph Mooney: The History Of The Biscuit Tin

Joseph Mooney talks of the history of Parliament's "biscuit tin."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Joseph Mooney is MP for Southland and joins us this
afternoon on the muster. Good afternoon, Joseph. Now you're the
MP for the biggest electorate in New Zealand, are you not? So?
How's that cargoing?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Anyway?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
You must have to renew the tires on it once
every six months, just about I'd like.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
To claim there, But I did a bit of fact
checking and discovered on the second biggest, the second veggast
generally drew so West.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Coast Tasman is a thousand squeak longer is bigger, but
Southland is thirty one thousand and thirteen squak klimeters, which
means it's bigger than Belgium geographically.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
But if you put if you have three electrics in
the South one myself White Techie Minerson, in West Coast Tasman,
or in Pew. Between the three of us, we represent
sixty seven cent of the South as geography, and that's
the twelfth biggest ian. The world does quite a bit
of country.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Well, if you talk about the biggest electorate arguably is
Rock and Tie because they've got the Chantum islands.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well we include the ocean. I suppose it would be
because there's about a two hour flight one way.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's a long way to go to the channels. I
know there now, Joseph, we'll start off us straight off
the back the backtrack by the government regarding agriculture and
horticulture as secondary school subjects. Why did this even come
on the table. They just didn't read the room.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Look from what I understand is I don't know all
the details of it will be fair, but officials, you know,
they put together a packager and I think they are
the obviously heard feedback from people. But as such as

(01:48):
make changes, they're cul subjects subjects. Mister Samford arsked the
minsitry Educational Review. They acknowledged it and complete advice was
given and following that they of their recommendation which the
Minister accepted. Result aprouction Hotocross Sciences being reisitated as a
industry lead subject that year twelve and year thirteen and

(02:09):
agri business can still be incorporated to business studies. So
just acknowledging that agriculture and primaries are incredibly important growth
sector music this government wants to double the sector and
having people who have had expertise and background and coming
through that through school is really.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Important, but you have to understand that retraction was bigger
than the South African side.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Step One of the one of the challenges that you
scover when you work in this field is there can
be often a mismatch between the intention of the government
and intentions of a minister and how that's interpreted by officials.
And not want to throw shade and officials, but there

(02:51):
can be a particular limns on things. And I guess
that's one of the really important roles of having elected
in into parliament who are able to feed you know,
they can scenes of their communities back in you know,
to to wing time to where these policy makers often
work and and they often frankly don't. They don't. I

(03:12):
don't understand the regions. They don't. They don't they haven't
come from our regions in a lot of cases, they
don't spend time in the regions. And it's a different world,
Like it really is a different world. I mean, just
the the scale of my region isn't conceivable to most
people in Wellington. It's academically interesting, but it's what it
actually means. You know, you need people who like myself,

(03:37):
for example, who can who can push it forward and
it's great having some one of the community as well
to push it back on that when when mistakes amazing
like the official acknowledgement that was in this case a
bill for.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
The biscuit tin. I love this biscuit tin. It's fascinating.
Whether it's an old tin, sample, a pack or what.
I don't know. You might be able to tell us
a bit more about this, but we talked about this
with Graham Butcher on the show yesterday, Joseph regarding the
ability to prohibit several lawsuits against greenhouse gases and climate
change consequences.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, that's a that's a really interesting one. So a
check on name of Michael Smith, who's sort of he's
previously most well known for cutting down one tree help,
but an activist. He's in the last few years focuses
attention on trying to create a new what's called a
tort or an action that can taken in court, and

(04:31):
basically there's three of them, but it's boil down to
it is trying to make potentially in the business, but
he's focused in the stage and organizations responsible for their
climate change emissions and the impact that has on on
what he would say his land in the far North,
and so he focused on a number of organizations just

(04:53):
outset on terror YEA and in a number of other
major companies UH from the from the outsets. But the
it's gone through sort of a number of different courts
at the Court of Appeal, the Court of Appeal of
judges said this is too complex, that involves complex international negotiations,
complex domestic policy considerations. It's not something for the courts

(05:19):
to deal with. Into the Supreme Court, and Supreme Court said, well,
Harden hasn't explicitly ruled out this type of new you know,
type of case, because it hasn't This hasn't existed before
this type of court action, I said, Partment hasn't explicitly
ruled it out, so therefore it can go ahead. I

(05:39):
am really concerned about that is this has potentially massive
implications for our economy, for businesses, for farmers, for for
everyone who you know, for people concerned about the price
of a butt. It our potentially similar for with the hemp
price there through the additional costs. And so I put it,
I put a drafted the bill and put it in

(06:00):
in the biscuit tin to rule out that that kind
of law or sorry, so that that type of action.
So yep, the spring course right has explicitly rule it out.
I think we should explicitly rule out. So that's currently
sitting the biscuiting and we're waiting to see if that
gets pulled out, and I certain hope it does.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Tell us about this biscuit ten. Is it old? Is
it an old sampler box from the sixties or do
you renew it every year? After morning SMOKEO? What's the
go on?

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Years ago someone went down to Briscoes or something like
that and I just bought bought this bisket ten and
there's quite a big tin, but literally as a tin,
and brought it back. So you know, there's there's one
hundred and something different MP's have got members bills and
they have a number that they assigned to each one

(06:49):
and they put they put you know some as it
counts with the numbers on them in the biscuit tin.
And then they slept one one person who works at
Parliament on the staff. You know, they slept different people
each time, and they put their hand in blind after
it's been mixed around and pull one out and that's
that's the you know, that's that's that that that then

(07:10):
goes into Parliament and can potentially become more There's something
that's quite unique to New Zealand and I don't think
from memory any other parliament has anything quite like it.
But it gives a chance for back benches to potentially,
you know, put in some some legal changes around different things.
And that's it's quite it's quite a cool mechanism. So
that means not only ministers can potentially make in correct

(07:33):
law and land, but back benches have an opportunity to
do so as well.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
So there's never actually been any biscuits in the biscuits
and I feel rapped.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Not to my knowledge, I can't rule it out completely,
but not to my knowledge.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
There's your home wreck for next week now and the
other thing as well. In parliament last night you're an
urgency the third reading of the Forestry Conversion Bill.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
It's gone through yep past last night with support from
all parties except for the Party into Partty Money. Look,
it was a nice sort of circle for me actually
because I helped shape this policy before the election when
I was the forest spokesperson. And you know, I should

(08:15):
stress that the primary sector is incredibly important and that
includes agriculture and includes forestry. Deconcerned here is that carbon
forestry sekewed the playing field and also potentially as permanently
used change because of the way the ETS settings work
and just the way that the pricing structure works. So
we put put in place where we can't National Party

(08:37):
campaign on a policy, and we were the only ones
to do it this, mind you, The only one is
to campaign on a policy at the election to put
restrictions on carbon forestry. And as you know, we won
the election obviously, so we have the mandate. We've worked
with our other coalition partners and we've got this through
and in fact and got the support of Labor last

(08:59):
night focus into awe the praaps a bit, you know,
some decision to around this piece of legislation. But I was,
I was is just pure chance. I happened to be
in the whip chi last night, so I managed to
get the very last speech because the part of the
multi went in the house. So I managed to get
the speech they or those would have had and that
was the last one and I got cast foot and

(09:20):
one votes or Nocial Party to make this lawches. Yeah,
it was quite quite quite a cool on my nagery.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
Forwards to finish that with Joseph Mooney, right tree, right place.
Always appreciate your time on the Master.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Good any mate cheers, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Joseph Mooney in Peter, Southland on the Master. Kotrina Thomas
from South and Real Support Trust joins us next in
the beef and lamb slot