A snail slides across the forecourt Photo: Composite image - Daniela Maoate-Cox / Jürgen Schoner
Parliament's post-Budget urgency did not go as the government might have hoped. Opposition MPs debated contentious bills, bringing the House to a virtual standstill and forcing the government to abandon one bill entirely and jettison debates in order to make progress.
After Thursday's Budget announcements and the opening stanza of the eight-hour long Budget Debate, the House followed tradition, pausing that debate to take urgency. The government's plan was to move 12 bills through 30 stages. Five bills would go to a Select Committee and six would skip that stage and be passed through all stages during the long urgency debate. The twelfth bill (the Supplementary Estimates) is not like the others: it receives no first reading debate and isn't sent to committee as a bill, but its contents are examined regardless.
It was a bold plan but doable, so long as Opposition resolve crumbled, and/or the debate took much of the possible time allowance-until midnight Saturday (the House doesn't meet on Sundays).
The Opposition was willing to fight very hard and debate past the midnight hour. MPs' weeks included sitting from 9am on Friday until 1am on Saturday, returning at 9am to continue until midnight Saturday. And yet, despite the long hours the government's plan fell well short.
When the House paused at 10pm on Thursday it had finished just three of the 30 planned stages of debate. It hadn't yet completed the first full bill, with ten beyond that yet to even begin.
A very long Friday
By the end of Friday (at 1am on Saturday morning), the House had toiled through 13 more hours of debate but completed just four further stages. The Taxation (Budget Measures) Bill (No 2) (which had gummed up the works on Thursday) took all of Friday morning to complete, and dribbled on a little after lunch.
The House then had a short burst of speed to move the Regulatory Standards Bill and the Building and Construction (Small Stand-alone Dwellings) Amendment Bill through their intended first readings and refer them to select committees for public feedback. The Regulatory Standards Bill was highly contentious and looks set to have an interesting time in select committee.
On Friday afternoon the House hit another roadblock - the Social Assistance Legislation (Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent) Amendment Bill. Welfare is one policy area where the governing coalition and opposition parties stand a chasmic distance apart. This bill was intended to pass through all stages, but it soaked up the entire Friday evening (until 1am) in a long Committee of the Whole House stage that remained incomplete.
Note: This level of slow-down is possible because the Committee of the Whole House stage has no time limits, enabling opposition MPs to filibuster (to some extent). Contentious bills debated under urgency (and skipping public feedback in select committee), tend to get extra attention in the House's own Committee stage instead.
The final day
When the House met again at 9am on Saturday it still had eight bills to move through a combined 21 stages. It had managed just nine stages (nearly ten), in two days.
Some previous oppositions have capitulated during Friday, resulting in the pace of debate accelerating until it was practically flying. The somewhat dispirited National-led opposition in the first Ardern government had wilted like that at times. The Opposition in this Parliament have not done that so far, and survived a seemingly endless Friday with reserves.
On Saturday morning the MPs were still showing enough pep that the Chair had to call for restraint, saying "Members, I know those first early morning coffees are starting to hit home, but can we just keep the noise down? It's very difficult to hear down here, in what's becoming a mosh pit."
By lunchtime Saturday the pace of progress had not increased. The Accommodation Supplement Bill had finally been completed, and MPs had managed the first two readings of the Social Security (Mandatory Reviews) Amendment Bill. That bill was also highly contentious. When the dinner break came four hours later the bill was still stuck in the Committee Stage with no clear end in sight.
At that point the government rather than the Opposition might have been described as capitulating, or at least organising a managed retreat. With just five hours of debate left before the midnight Saturday deadline, the government abandoned the Mandatory Reviews Bill halfway through its Committee of the Whole House stage (they can come back to it later). They opted instead for debates on less-contentious bills, debates that could not be filibustered; they also reordered the bills still to come, (in effect dropping one of them entirely). All of that is very unusual. Under normal conditions, Parliament's Order Paper is not easily changeable once the day has started. But the order of bills in an Urgency Motion is not sacrosanct, but it doesn't often change.
The government also opted to only debate some stages, ending debate before the lengthy Committee of the Whole House stage could begin. This means that the Rates Rebate Amendment Bill and the Invest New Zealand Bill both had first and second readings and then went no further. Doing so means that, despite the fact that not all stages were read under urgency the bills have avoided being sent to a select committee. If just one reading had occurred they would be sent to a committee automatically.
The Public Finance Amendment Bill and the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill were both read just once. Both of those bills were sent to select committee (the second for a shortened four month consideration).
When midnight Saturday finally arrived, the government's urgency plans had recovered somewhat, but were still badly bruised. Eleven stages of debate had not been started. Two others were left incomplete. Of the six bills that the government wanted passed through all stages, only two had been completed. One of them had not even begun.
Opposition MPs can never really win the three-year war that is a Parliament, but they sometimes show that they can make the victor fight very hard to win, and leave them bruised by endless skirmishes along the way.
Points of interest
During the first reading debate on his Regulatory Standards Bill, David Seymour nominated a select committee and added, in the usual language, "and at the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 23 December 2025." Ministers indicate a specific day for a committee to report back on a bill if the committee's duration will be different to the automatic six months - in this case seven months. Shortly after his speech, Seymour interjected during a Point of Order, saying to a Te Pāti Māori MP, "God, you're an idiot." When the debate ended and it was time to follow through on that earlier promise of a seven-month committee, he… forgot. The committee will therefore meet for six rather than seven months. It is not against the rules to fail to follow through with the earlier indicated intention.
There was an extended battle in the minutes around midnight Friday over whether or not a request from National to end the debate had been correct, and then whether or not the House should recall the Speaker. Behind the fuss was the knowledge that once the debate ended, the voting on proposed amendments would begin and would be very lengthy (it took an hour). Once it began, the House would continue until all the votes were made (it went until 1am). The Opposition would rather have that voting take place (and take up time) the following morning. The government would prefer it didn't. In the chair, Maureen Pugh sided with the governing side of the House. Unusually, when the Opposition asked to recall the Speaker (so he could adjudicate) the governing side went against normal protocol and voted against the request. During the brouhaha, Assistant Speaker Maureen Pugh made one or two rulings that appeared to be very gently walked back the following morning by Assistant Speaker Teanau Tuiono. His message appeared to be - more or less - that those rulings shouldn't be considered a new precedent.
Another extended argument occurred over whether or not there should be a debate about the request for a shortened select committee consideration. Government ministers can nominate any committee duration they want, but if the period is shorter than four months, a debate must occur on the decision. That debate uses up time, so government ministers nominating shortened hearings opted for exactly four months. or did they? The date for reporting back was actually short of four months. The Speaker agreed with the government that, as the calendar in the House does not move forward during a multi-day urgency, it was still actually Thursday 22nd (even if it was really the 23rd or 24th outside the Chamber). Therefore, the shorter period was allowed without debate.
One of the many ways that opposition MPs filibuster during the Committee of the Whole House stage is by suggesting amendments to bills. They know the amendments are almost certain to fail, but their existence gives them something to talk about, and voting on each one also takes time (if they are allowed). Many of those amendments are serious, some less so. They get especially silly when the topic of debate is the title of a bill. The 'we're all going a little mad after such a long debate' prize probably goes to Lawrence Xu-Nan (one of the Parliament's most impressive new MPs), who tabled an amendment to the title of the Accommodation Supplement bill, replacing "(Accommodation Supplement and Income-related Rent)" with "(National Loves Cars So Much That They Want More People to Live in Them)". It was, of course, against the rules (as merely an attempt to criticise the bill), but it probably helped keep up spirits during the long filibuster.
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