Most weeks at Parliament are reasonably predictable. There is always uncertainty around how far through the Order Paper they will debate, or whether any particularly curly issues will arise during Question Time, but that’s normal.
This week is complicated enough it might best be explained with a flow-chart, but I’ll attempt words.
It’s complicated by a combination of urgency and a Members’ Day.
The Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins, outlines a complicated week at Parliament
Chris Hipkins speaks in an urgent debate on the travel bubble Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
The Government is planning for urgency on Tuesday afternoon. There are two Covid-related bills the Government wants passed, and fast. More on them in a moment.
Before that a few other things will happen:
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Question Time - of course. Because (almost) everyday begins with Question Time.
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Formal adoption of Parliament’s agreed sitting calendar for 2023. Fingers crossed next year is not as frequently interrupted by Covid as 2020 and 2021.
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Completing the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. (The parties have already agreed to combine the debates for the final two stages). This bill hasn’t been bumped by the need for urgency because the third reading dates for treaty settlement bills are pre-agreed so iwi can watch proceedings.
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Finishing the drug testing legislation before summer. There are just three speeches left to go before a vote on the third reading.
Getting urgent
Then it gets a bit different. Around 5pm the Government will move a motion to “accord urgency”. Urgency motions aren’t debated but are voted on. The Minister moving urgency explains to the House why it is needed and what bills the motion includes. The urgency can only continue until those bills are completed. Under urgency the House will debate the following:
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COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Bill. This will be introduced and then debated through all stages back to back. This is a bill that allows the Government “to introduce the Covid-19 certificate system, where people can use their Covid-19 vaccine certificates to gain admission to things that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do if they were unvaccinated.” (That’s the traffic light system.) “It also has provisions in it that allow for employers to make assessments on whether or not their staff should be required to be vaccinated.” - Chris Hipkins
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Taxation (COVID-19 Support Payments and Working for Families Tax Credits) Bill. This will also be introduced and then debated through all stages back to back. This bill is focused on providing increased financial support to some people.
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And potentially a number of other bills as well - there are six further government bills listed in the urgency motion.
Flow-chart time
The debate on those bills will continue until 10pm on Tuesday evening and then restart again at 9am on Wednesday morning (which will still be Tuesday inside Parliament’s debating chamber). Here is where it gets tricky.
If the debates on both those first two Covid-19 bills are completed before 1pm on Wednesday the House will continue debating some other government business until 1pm, then the MPs will break for a quick lunch and come back for the usual Wednesday evening sitting and a scheduled Members’ Day.
If however the House reaches 1pm and hasn’t quite finished off the two Covid-19 bills, then it will break for lunch and come back for Question Time and a continued debate on all the bills in the urgency motion (including the non-Covid bills) until 10pm.
The ‘extra’ non-Covid bills in the urgency motion are the next six bills on the Order Paper after the drug testing bill, beginning with the Maori Purposes Bill. Note that the urgent Covid-19 bills aren’t on the Order Paper at all. They won’t be introduced until 2pm on Tuesday and the Order Paper never has bills on it that haven’t been introduced yet - they don’t ‘exist’ yet, as far as the House is concerned.
Anyway - if the House has to continue on the Covid-19 Bills after 1pm Wednesday the planned Member’s Day would vanish and it will become a Government Day. If that happens then next Wednesday will be a Members’ Day instead.
That disappearance of the Member’s Day is why those extra government bills are padding out the urgency motion. If the urgency motion was restricted to the Covid-19 bills, and the House didn’t complete them until Wednesday afternoon, the day would end and all the MPs would go home, even if it was only a few minutes into the day. So urgency motions that might stray into Member’s Day are padded out with enough business to fill the evening - just in case.
You can see why a flow-chart might have helped.
So... Wednesday evening will either be a list of local and members’ bills or a list of government bills - and which it will be depends on how quickly they can get through four stages each on two Covid-19 bills under urgency.