Parliament set for urgency session

Parliament is set for another bout of urgency this week with the Government seeking to deal with two bills that have yet to be seen.

NZPA understands that one of the bills corrects mistakes in the Immigration Act and the other is to sack the Canterbury Regional Council, replace it with commissioners and suspend its elections scheduled for later this year.

It is possible that other legislation currently before Parliament will also be debated under urgency.

Labour leader Phil Goff said the Government was in a "shambles" as there had been weeks of sitting days to deal with legislation and the Government seemed unwilling to make the proposed laws public before they were introduced to Parliament.

"It is a classic case of this Government ramming through legislation under urgency... That is no way to govern the country," Mr Goff said.

The Government has regularly used urgency rules to pass legislation as they extend the sitting hours and speed up the passage of bills into law.

In a number of cases some bills have been passed without any public submissions or select committee consideration in just a few days.

National has also dropped question time when Labour has deliberately used delaying tactics to stall legislation.

- NZPA