David Lindsey looks at the history of conscience voting in New Zealand, with particular reference to our liquor laws.
Sir Geoffrey Palmer learned the consequences of liquor the hard way.
In 1988, Sir Geoffrey, as Minister of Justice, introduced a Bill he had high hopes would sort out the mess that was New Zealand's liquor laws.
He was to be disappointed, for the Act that was finally passed into law some 13 months later fell short of his expectations.
Sir Geoffrey alleges he failed because MPs were granted a conscience vote, and used it knowingly or otherwise to undermine the very purpose of the Bill.
It is little wonder that Sir Geoffrey, as Chairman of the Law Commission, is now strenuously arguing that the next Sale of Liquor Act should be passed by voting along party lines.
A conscience vote is essentially an "agree to disagree" provision.
In general, parties grant them to their MPs when an issue is too contentious for the caucus to remain unified.
But in practice, parties do not always have a free hand in deciding whether one will be held or not.
There have been 239 conscience votes since 1891 - a fifth of them liquor-related.
Four issues in particular were instrumental in its emergence as a mechanism for maintaining party unity - liquor, gambling, the granting of the vote to women, and the teaching of religion in schools.
Of these, liquor was easily the most important.
Drunkenness, with its attendant social problems, was rife in the late 19th century, and although MPs agreed something had to be done, they disagreed on how to achieve it.
While some argued alcohol should be banned altogether, others believed Parliament had no role in telling people what they could drink.
The dispute was little short of a war between prohibitionists and the liquor trade, with parliamentarians caught in the middle.
Parties, at that time in the early phase of their development, were already nervous about their prospects for survival, and decided it was going to be too politically costly to impose a party view on their members.
William Pember Reeves, a prominent politician of the late 19th-century Liberal party, publicly pleaded that in differing on this issue, "we should try to differ as friends, not as enemies".
This sage advice was the beginning of conscience voting.
Alcohol remained an extremely contentious issue well into the 20th century, and the expectation that a conscience vote would always be granted when liquor legislation came before Parliament became entrenched.
Eventually, conscience voting became a parliamentary convention that parties resisted at their peril, and this remains the case today.
In the 21st century, the range of issues subject to conscience votes is wide.
In recent years it has been applied to prostitution, homosexuality, civil unions, abortion, shop trading hours, parental discipline, smoking, euthanasia, adoption, divorce, horse racing, blood sampling of suspected criminals, transport safety, capital punishment, electoral reform, advertising, the use of cannabis, human rights and gambling.
Michael Cullen once remarked that conscience votes are applied to "anything that somebody might enjoy doing".
Supporters of conscience voting argue that its benefits are four-fold.
First, it improves the ability of MPs to represent their constituents - freed from the obligation to support their party's position, they can attend to the views of their voters.
Second, without parties to hide behind, MPs can be held accountable for their voting behaviour.
Third, better decisions are made during conscience votes because MPs are forced to think about the issues more rigorously; alternative viewpoints may be presented with a reasonable chance of being heard, and parliamentary debate becomes more meaningful.
Fourth, in contrast to party votes, MPs can act according to their personal conscience.
The value of conscience voting in legislative decision-making is not straightforward, however.
Numerous studies have shown that people actually vote for parties, not individuals.
Many voters do not even to know who their candidate is, let alone what they believe.
The mandate for decision-making therefore rests with parties, not individual MPs.
Other critics have focused on the challenge of decision-making in a complex modern society like New Zealand - making good decisions is difficult without the support of a team of policy experts, and individual MPs can't possibly understand the issues sufficiently to make good decisions all the time.
Further, many decisions are just one component of a whole programme of policy changes that go towards successful implementation - individual MPs do not have the longevity required to maintain a consistent approach to policy making, and treating decisions as if they are separate issues is impractical.
The problem Sir Geoffrey Palmer encountered was that, during conscience votes, MPs can indulge in what Dr Martyn Finlay once called "instant legislation".
In Peter Dunne's words, conscience voting enables "bright ideas dreamed up on the spur of the moment, [to be] drafted on the back of an envelope, and submitted as amendments" that "invariably get us into trouble".
David Lange considered conscience debates "an appalling ragbag of bigotry and sentimentality" that was unlikely to lead to good decision-making.
Winston Churchill considered that this aspect of conscience voting allowed all sorts of "happy thoughts" to be placed upon the statute book.
Simon Power now stands in a long line of ministers who have wished to impose their will on liquor legislation but who are frustrated by the will of Parliament.
The result may once again be more confusion, but that is not uncommonly the outcome of democracy.
David Lindsey is completing a PhD in politics at the University of Auckland. His thesis is on conscience voting in New Zealand.
