A workshop on Papua New Guinea's Organic Law on Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates has ended with a resolution to maintain efforts to rework the law after it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last year.
Present at the Port Moresby workshop were officials from Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, who are keen to look at ways to improve parliamentary systems which frequently struggle with motions of no-confidence.
Jon Fraenkel from the Australian National University says although everyone wants to get rid of frivolous votes of no-confidence that are used to gain ministerial or cash advantages, there are benefits to having such provisions.
"But sometimes votes of no confidence can be a very important aspect of parliamentary systems. Indeed one of the key advantages of parliamentary systems is that they enable mid-term changes of government. If you've got a very unpopular government, you want a no-confidence vote to be able to test its support on the floor of the house and possibly engineer some sort of change."
Dr Jon Fraenkel of the ANU
