A long passage: end of life choice

On the Sunday show for the House this week (audio below) we recap the passage of the End of Life Choice Bill, over a period longer than the current government (it's passage not our recap).

Under urgency a bill can pass through Parliament like a dose of salts, heading from introduction to third reading in a single day. That’s unusual but it does happen. The End of Life Choice Bill took a tad longer. About two years and five months.

When this Bill was pulled out of the proverbial biscuit tin way back in June of 2017 Bill English was still the Prime Minister.

It was chosen at random to be debated by Parliament because it is a member’s bill. As we do with many new member’s bills The House had a chat with the MP proposing it. In this case Daniela Maoate-Cox spoke with David Seymour, who at the time was a part of the government - a Parliamentary Undersecretary. 

Daniela asked David Seymour what he thought his bill’s chances were. He had surveyed his colleagues and thought he had a good chance. But before it got a vote there was an election and the guard changed. 

Between the time his bill was chosen and its third reading last week, something like a third of the MPs in Parliament have changed. At a rough count 40 MPs are new since then.

Eventually, in a new Parliament and sixth months after it was added to the order paper, the Bill got a first reading.

It passed that first reading 76 to 44. First reading votes are usually a little more generous as MPs or parties give an idea the benefit of the doubt and wait to see how it develops. 

Immediately after the first reading debate, the House sent the Bill to the Justice Select Committee with instructions for it to have a report completed and returned within nine months. Four to six months is the usual duration, so nine months was generous. The committee actually took 16 months on what became a gargantuan task, hearing evidence from thousands of submitters.

The Justice Committee had been been reading and listening to submissions for most of a year when The House sat down with Chris Bishop from National and Ginny Andersen from Labour to see how it was going.

The House eventually got to have a debate on the Justice Committee’s report and recommendations two years after theBill was pulled from the biscuit tin.

The Committee had considered more than 39,000 submissions, including oral evidence from 1,350 submitters. Hearings had been held in Whangarei, Auckland, Tauranga, Rotorua, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Whanganui, Napier, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Invercargill.

The Committee ended up making only minor and technical suggestions, leaving substantive changes to the Committee of the Whole House. The Bill passed the second reading 70 votes to 50.

Which brought it to the committee stage, which also turned into a herculean effort from MPs, taking up five whole debating days, with voting often pushing well into the night, on one occasion until after 1am. 

Those committee sessions took over all Member’s Days through July, August, September and October.  All other member’s bills have been waiting in a backlog for this, the most advanced of them to complete its journey. With member's bills it's 'most complete goes first'.

The votes on the 113 separate Supplementary Order Papers (documents suggesting amendments) were usually roughly 70 to 50. Only two of those amendments were accepted. One was an extensive rewrite of the whole bill by its sponsor David Seymour that, among other things, narrowed the eligibility of those who might want to die, they now had to be terminally ill with less than 6 months to live. 

That big rewrite also knocked out many other amendments. Parliament’s rules say that if there are multiple amendments on the same clause the first one agreed renders the others unnecessary. Amendments from a bill’s sponsor are considered first.

The other successful amendment added the requirement for a referendum. That change was suggested by New Zealand First who would not support the bill without it. It passed with just two votes to spare - the closest the bill got to failing during its long journey.

Having finished the committee stage, the bill reached a third and final reading this last week. The final vote was 69 to 51. Since the second reading two MPs had changed their votes from Aye to No and one MP had changed from No to Aye.

MPs will get to vote on the bill one last time - next year along with the rest of us - at the election.

Here at The House we like to find ways to talk about how Parliament works. This bill has consistently engaged people’s attention and so given us excuses to discuss many things along the way including conscience issues and votes, the tactics of filibustering, how committee stages work, the reasons and motivations for suggesting amendments, and mechanics of the third reading. It even provided a photo essay on its final day. I expect there’ll be articles on referendums as well.