Social Development Minister Louise Upston. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
A piece of government legislation has been discharged because no minister was available to speak on it in the House.
The Regulatory Systems (Social Security) Amendment Bill was supposed to have its first reading at Parliament on Wednesday morning.
The bill was in the name of Social Development Minister Louise Upston, but she was absent from the House when the bill was called.
Labour's assistant whip Arena Williams moved that Parliament set the bill aside, so it could move on to the next item on the order paper.
"Clearly the other side of the House is not organised," Labour's deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni said.
"There was no minister in the House to take the call for the first speech of the first reading."
National's Tim van de Molen raised an objection, saying it was inaccurate to say there was no minister in the House, given Melissa Lee, who had just finished introducing her own piece of legislation, was present and able to take a call.
However, Lee did not take a call on the bill.
After taking some advice from the Clerk, Assistant Speaker Maureen Pugh recommended that the bill be discharged.
On Tuesday, Leader of the House Chris Bishop moved that Parliament sit in extended hours so the bill, among others, could be read.
Upston later accepted the mistake was on her, and took responsibility.
"I stuffed up. The House was progressing faster than I anticipated, and I didn't make sure a hard copy of the speech was in the House in time," she said.
"I accept that it's on me, I didn't get it right ... I'm fully coppping I got it wrong."
Upston said she had apologised to her party.
She said the legislation was a tidy-up bill introduced by the previous government, which addressed minor technical errors from the rewrite of the Social Security Act 2018 to ensure consistency between legislation, policy, and practice.
It also repealed the Family Benefits (Home Ownership) Act 1964, which Upston said was redundant legislation after the Family Benefit was abolished in 1991.
Put to her that beneficiaries were increasingly facing sanctions for not turning up to appointments, she said "I was here, but as I said, didn't get the paperwork in the right place ... maybe I'm on first strike".
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it was "not great" that the bill was not read.
"What happened was the call came early, the minister was actually in a Cabinet Committee meeting, there wasn't time to actually put an alternative minister up front."
He said the bill was not consequential in terms of its impact on welfare payments and other things and would be introduced later in the year.
Deputy shadow Leader of the House Duncan Webb said the situation was an "absolute shambles" and the government was being unprofessional.
"Maybe a day's pay should be docked. Perhaps someone needs give her a phone call, make sure she turns up to work on time next time," he said.
