The power to say no is also the power to make the rules, or at least in part.

Parliament legislates. But it also makes rules giving other people a bit of legislative power too. Parliament does this whenever it sets policies letting someone hold up or block someone else’s otherwise lawful activities. These "veto players" can demand concessions in exchange for not vetoing.

Suppose your house has heritage features. A heritage society could threaten to make it hard for you to get consent for an addition onto the back of the house - unless you incorporate features that make them happy. Maybe they do not have the explicit right to do that, but because RMA processes let them make things hard for you, their veto power lets them extract concessions.

The Dominion Post this week reported on the police’s use of veto power around alcohol policy. The police recently have seemed to be trying to establish regulatory powers that they were never granted through the Sale and Supply of Liquor Act. Because police and medical officers of health can hold up publicans’ and bottle shops’ liquor licences, they can demand concessions. In Wellington, they are only supporting new bottle stores downtown if the shops run restricted trading hours and only sell expensive products.

Bar and bottle shop owners who do not want trouble with the police play along because that is the safer route. The costs to them of licence objections or of heavy handed police enforcement are too high. While the government explicitly rejected alcohol minimum pricing last year; the police are implementing it anyway, store by store.

Parliament last week had to legislate around some of these veto players. The 2012 Sale and Supply of Liquor Act provided special permits to let bars open at non-standard hours during international sporting events. The Committee Report was explicit that this was one of the points of special permits. But, the veto players have said that international rugby matches on their own do not justify a special licence. And police have objected to World Cup special license applications.

David Seymour’s bill allowing extended hours during the Rugby World Cup is great. But there is a bigger issue at play: the government needs to rein in the police lest Parliament again have to legislate around the veto player it created.