Parliament Buildings, from left, Bowen House, the Beehive, and Parliament House, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Parliament Buildings, from left, Bowen House, the Beehive, and Parliament House, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Government has come under fire from the Opposition on a number of occasions in recent weeks due to its use of urgency in the House.
Act leader David Seymour has been a particularly vocal critic, saying the frequent use of urgency shows the Government is "more interested in itsown agenda than what's best for New Zealand".
Senior National MP Michael Woodhouse was particularly upset with the Government's use of urgency last week during the first reading of the Covid-19 Response Amendment Bill.
"There's a bit of a pattern emerging here in the Government since 2017, and I look forward to the data being analysed about how many bills have been passed under urgency," he said.
His point is that, from his perspective, the Government is rushing through too much legislation under urgency.
Under Parliament's rules, the Government can bypass the select committee stage on a bill where members of the public can submit on the legislation in an attempt to make it better.
Data compiled by the Parliamentary Library shows that during its first term in 2008-2011, the National Government took the House into urgency 30 times.
That compares to the 18 times the 2017-2020 Labour-led Government took the House into urgency.
In 2011, Parliament's rules were changed and "extended sitting hours" were put in place.
That meant that many bills, which would have previously been put through under urgency, were instead debated during these extended sitting hours.
National's Shadow Leader of the House, Chris Bishop, said if extended hours motion for the bills were counted as well, Labour's first term was up around the same level as National in its first term in 2008-11.
Shadow Leader of the House Chris Bishop speaking in Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
"Urgency can be justified. Nobody objects to going into urgency for legislation in response to the Canterbury earthquakes, for example, or for Covid-19," he said.
"But using urgency to ram through controversial issues which the Government has no mandate for is objectionable."
This was a sentiment echoed by a number of National MPs during the Māori wards debate as well.
Bishop said the Government did not campaign on this issue and it wasn't in their manifesto – "yet it was law within a month or so after a very short committee process".
But Leader of the House Chris Hipkins said that simply counting how many times the House went into urgency was a "superficial measure of how urgency is used".
"What is meaningful is how much extra time was created, how many bills went through how many stages, how many bills had genuine urgency about them and procedural issues that made urgency an option."
National, for example, pushed 13 bills through the House in one period of urgency, on October 20, 2009.
They included the Domestic Violence Amendment Bill, Privacy Amendment Bill, Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill and the War Pension Amendment Bill.
Hipkins argued that few of these pieces of legislation had "genuine urgency about them".
"By Michael Woodhouse's own measure of 'how many bills have been passed under urgency', it is clear National made much greater use of it," he said of Woodhouse's comments on Labour's use of urgency.
"It's another National Party own goal," Hipkins said.
The Parliamentary Library data also shows that in the first six months of National's second term – December 2011 to April 13, 2012 – urgency was not used a single time.
Leader of the House Chris Hipkins says the bills passed had 'genuine urgency about them'. Photo / Mark Mitchell
It did, however, take full advantage of the extended sitting hours after the rule change the year prior.
But the current Labour Government has used urgency eight times since December, as well as utilising extended sitting hours.
Bishop said he suspected Labour planned to use urgency more, "simply because they can".
"They have a majority in the House, the first-ever single-party majority Government under MMP."
But Hipkins said that so far this term, urgency had been used as the legislation being pushed through all had hard deadlines by which they needed to be passed.
For example, the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill had to be in force before the summer festival season; the Taxation (Covid-19 Resurgence Support Payments and Other Matters) Bill had to be in place in case of a sudden Covid-19 resurgence.
Act, however, is not convinced.
"Parliament has processes in place for lawmaking so we have a chance to debate them properly, fix any issues and hear views from the public," Seymour said.
"If the Government wanted good laws that didn't have unintended consequences it would stop forcing laws through under urgency."
