Page "Michael Laws" Paragraph 3

Laws never had a good relationship with the National Party's senior hierarchy.

As a researcher he had done much of his work for Winston Peters, whom party leader Jim Bolger looked upon with disapproval.

Tensions persisted between Laws and Bolger after Laws became an MP, made worse by Laws ' declaration that he would attempt to follow popular opinion in Hawke's Bay rather than National Party policy.

Laws voted against his party on a number of issues, joining several other dissident MPs to oppose the economic policies of the Minister of Finance Ruth Richardson.

In early 1991 he even organised public seminars designed to avoid his government's new superannuation surtax policies.

The Bolger administration later abandoned the surtax, but Laws earned the ongoing enmity of his colleagues for his stance.

He also championed the unsuccessful Death with Dignity Bill, which aimed to legalise voluntary euthanasia.

The terminal illness of Cam Campion, a fellow dissident in Laws ' first term in parliament, prompted this advocacy.