Please find attached English and Afrikaans soundbites by Henro Kruger MP.
On Wednesday, the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration deliberated on the DA’s Ease of Doing Business private member’s bill (PMB).
Numerous members of the committee erroneously opposed the Bill and asserted that the legislative process must be brought to an end because it is serving in the wrong committee, amongst other spurious reasons. That is however not the case. If the members in question read the Bill and the accompanying documentation, they would have realised that it seeks to establish a new unit within the Department of Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation (DPME), for the purposes of reducing red tape. The Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration deals directly with matters related to the DPME.
Some members also contended that the Speaker referred to Bill to the wrong committee, which is also patently false, as the intention from the start was that the Bill serve before the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration. It is also absurd that the committee would be usurping or infringing on other committees’ areas of functioning, as some members suggested.
Another objection given by certain members of the committee was that this Bill is a duplication of a similar Bill introduced in and ultimately rejected by the Fifth Parliament. There is no rule prohibiting introduction of new bills, to a new Parliament, that are similar to past ones.
A similarly absurd objection was that the Bill would interfere with the separation of powers doctrine, and that it is incorrectly classified as a section 75 bill. Both assertions are false, and this was already pointed out in the Fifth Parliament to the Portfolio Committee on Small Business Development by Parliament’s own legal counsel when these very same objections were raised to the Red Tape Impact Assessment Bill.
It is disappointing that members of the ANC and the EFF are, once again, failing the people of South Africa based on their own legislative illiteracy. One EFF member even went as far as asserting that the Bill is problematic because it would indirectly privatise businesses that are already private.
It was also disappointing that I was not afforded a chance to air my own comments on this PMB during deliberations and was only afforded the opportunity to respond in writing to objections.
Such subversion of the legislative process cannot be allowed to stand. The DA will be writing to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thandi Modise MP, to air our grievances regarding the subversion of the legislative process by members of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration.
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