Author Archives: Matt Burrows

Opinion: Cherish the independence of elected members

By Matt Burrows | Tue 2nd September 2014 - 4:38 pm

I was alarmed initially by the title of Mark Pack´s piece “Lessons from Rennard #4: who gets the party whip is a matter for the whole party”. As it turns out I find myself in agreement with much of it.

Rightly he points out that the smaller the group the more disproportionate influence one person will have. I like his suggestion of referring decisions of removal of the whip to the Federal Appeals Panel. Some scrutiny of the decision from outside parliament will be beneficial to Party and the individual. If adopted, I hope this would apply only to cases of personal misconduct.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Parliament and whip | 8 Comments

Opinion: In and Better

By Matt Burrows | Sat 31st May 2014 - 9:09 am

Well, that was grim. The results for the Liberal Democrats from the European Elections were awful and there’s no varnishing over it. For sure there will be a review of the European aspect of the campaign as well as for the locals.

Despite what the results show, as a party we were right to make the positive case for being IN. Who else was going to do it? We are a liberal and internationalist party and we showed we had the stomach to …