Parliament gets urgent on sentencing, mining, and charter schools

By Louis Collins, The House

Parliament watchers this week were possibly slightly transfixed by the Parliament Bill, which includes some constitutional adjustments.

That isn't the only thing MPs were focused on though. They spent much of the week debating other legislation, and under urgency. Here is what else went on in the House this week.

Sometimes, at the beginning of a sitting, an MP will propose a motion in reaction to a recent event. Often these take the form of motions of congratulations. For instance, twice recently, MPs have congratulated New Zealand Olympic teams for their efforts in Paris.

This week, the motion was a bit different; rather than a 'congratulations' it was a 'welcoming'.

Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs Todd McClay stood and moved "that this House welcome the release of New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens on Saturday after being held hostage for 592 days in Papua, Indonesia; convey best wishes to Mr. Mehrtens and his family and friends, as they recover from this deeply difficult experience".

Unsurprisingly, that motion was agreed to.

Also on Tuesday, Leader of the House Chris Bishop asked the House to accord urgency. Yes, that's the relevant verb for the concept.

Urgency allows a government to speed up the legislative process, allowing longer sessions, or even additional days. It permits skipping the waiting periods between stages of the legislative process, and (contentiously, due to limiting public participation), it gives the government the ability to completely cut out the select committee stage.

The government did not use all of those powers. This week's urgency wasn't used to skip select committees entirely, though some of the new bills came with very short committee periods - most drastically the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill (which removes the ban on petroleum exploration) allowed the public just seven days to make submissions.

The reason given for this incredibly short time frame was the current gas shortage (though, as Megan Woods noted, the gap between successful exploration and gas supply in New Zealand is 16 years on average).

Parliament recently missed a day's debating due to the death of Kiingi Tuheitia, and this was the government's reason for this urgency - particularly to make sure a number of bills on their first reading got to select committee promptly.

Regarding the Education and Training Amendment Bill, Bishop argued that "charter schools [needed] enough lead time to open by term one next year."

Which bills were accorded urgency this week?

• All legislative stages of the Imprest Supply (Second for 2024/25) Bill and the third reading of the Appropriation (2024/25 Estimates) Bill - these are bills that let the government spend money.
• The remaining stages of the Education and Training Amendment Bill (aka charter school legislation). This will now become law.
• The interrupted debate on the instruction to committee for the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill (No 2) - this was of course the debate in which an old filibustering tactic was used to delay proceedings.
• The first reading and referral to select committee of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill. This bill slaps down a finding by the Court of Appeal which made it easier for iwi to demonstrate customary marine title. The bill's preamble even makes a point of noting the court's decision and its legal interpretation that the bill was written to undo. (This bill also has a shortened select committee time.)
• The Crown Minerals Amendment Bill, which seeks to lift the ban on petroleum exploration in the Taranaki region.
• The third reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. This is part of the government's larger justice strategy, along with the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill and the District Court (District Court Judges) Amendment Bill; both of which received their first readings and were referred to the justice committee this week.
• And finally, the second reading of the Contracts of Insurance Bill, which unlike most of the above legislation, has quite broad support across the House.

If you're starting to yawn, just be glad that you're not an MP, who during urgency can be stuck in the House debating legislation until midnight. Likely to their relief, the House finished urgency at the relatively early hour of 10pm.

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