After Ministers of Finance have delivered a Budget Statement and the party leaders have each had a crack at it, the House typically adjourns the debate over the wider budget and instead gets into some policy specifics.
It's usual to take the House into urgency on the afternoon of budget day, to progress some Government bills quickly through the House, or as was the case this year – not so quickly.
Listen to the House's report on the very slow progress under urgency to Friday evening.
Parliament's Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, is handed the vote tally by the clerk on duty at the Table. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
The Government announced it wanted to move nine bills through a combined 27 debating stages. Some to just have first readings, and others to be passed through all stages (just awaiting the Royal assent to become law).
But 27 stages is a lot of debating to fit in between Thursday afternoon and Saturday night, when urgency must end at midnight. By Friday evening they had managed just six stages, with 21 to go. On Saturday evening they reached the last bill, with just four stages left to debate. They had however apparently skipped a bill originally listed as being debated through all stages – the Forests (Log Traders and Forestry Advisers Repeal) Amendment Bill.
It’s worth noting that the pace of debating through days of urgency often speeds up, and not every bill is usually as contentious as the early ones. The least contentious or least urgent bills usually go last and sometimes pass more smoothly.
The bills agreed as being debated under urgency are:
- the first reading of the Appropriation (2023/24 Supplementary Estimates) Bill
- the introduction and passing through all stages of:
- the introduction, first reading, and referral to a select committee of:
- the introduction and passing through all stages of: