Parliament is this week to sit under urgency - something that doesn’t happen as often these days as it used to.
Although it’s already been adding an extra morning sitting each week in this second half of the Parliamentary year, the Government is opting for urgency this week in order to gain additional sitting hours to clear a backlog of legislation that the Government deems needs to be progressed.
MPs back in the debating chamber for the first sitting day of 2021 Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Reasons for Parliament to sit under urgency vary, including to fix up legislative mistakes, preempt a deadline or react to an emergency. But the reasons can also be more prosaic. This evening the Government’s Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins, will table a motion for Parliament to go into urgency, which he characterised as an attempt to tidy up loose ends before Christmas, with little more than two Parliament sitting weeks left in the year.
“Through this urgency motion we will be passing a number of things: one, we've got some legislation that needs to be through by the end of the year and so this urgency session is a chance for us to to tidy up those loose ends before Christmas; we've got a range of first readings which are simply going through before Christmas because it means that over the Christmas holiday period the select committee can open the bills up for public submission and so on, and people get that much extra time to consider the bills before they progress through the rest of the stages next year; and then there are other things which are just legislation that for various reasons the Government wants to progress, needs to progress, and needs extra hours to be able to do that,” Hipkins explained.
His urgency motion will set out all of the legislation that the Government hopes to progress during the urgency session. In some cases, the aim is to complete legislation, while in other cases it’s a matter of a bill getting a first reading or to progress a certain stage of a bill.
The plan is that from Wednesday, the House will sit from 9am to midnight. This can continue for the rest of the week (with one-hour breaks for lunch and dinner) until the agreed debate stages are completed. It could go until midnight Saturday if necessary. The Midnight Saturday deadline is because Parliament never sits on a Sunday. Hipkins said he would be surprised if they were still going by that point.
“How much legislation gets progressed and how quickly really sits in the hands of the Opposition. It really depends what they choose to exert their energies towards.
“(Urgency) used to be a lot more common. Our Government has used urgency less than any government in recent history, and so there is a little bit of adjusting for people to get used to.”
How is urgency different?
Normally when a bill is introduced to the House, MPs have to wait three sitting days before it can be debated. But that rule doesn’t apply under urgency.
Also, after a reading of a bill MPs normally must wait at least a day to debate the next reading or stage of a bill. Under urgency you can actually debate a bill from finish to end.
Another difference under urgency is that the House can dispense with the Select Committee process for a particular bill.
Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
None of this urgency stuff guarantees that MPs will be getting about the place with an extra swing in their steps or debating in a particularly pressing way.
The Government move for extra hours is partly related to the way it is still dealing with disruption from a year ago caused by Covid-19, and other disruptions this year that impacted on Parliament’s sitting time including the resignation of the Speaker and the death of the Queen.
