Source: Radio New Zealand
The House was in the midst of its fourth evening of urgency on Friday. VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
A late night voting error during a fourth evening of urgency last week forced the government to end urgency sooner than expected.
Most Friday evenings at Parliament, not many people are around – maybe the cleaners, maybe a few staffers getting ahead for next week, and most MPs have headed back to their electorates. If anyone is still around, they’re probably having a drink at Parliament’s Pint of Order bar.
But the last Friday night of Parliament’s penultimate sitting block for the year was different (Parliament typically doesn’t sit on a Friday). The House was in the midst of its fourth evening of urgency, which was accorded on Tuesday evening by Deputy Leader of the House Louise Upston.
Urgency gives the government the ability to progress bills through the House more quickly, by enabling longer hours of debating with no stand-down period between each of a bill’s stages of consideration, meaning a bill can go from first to third reading in the same day. This recent bout of urgency saw various stages of 13 bills on the urgency agenda, with none of them bypassing the select committee stage – which is probably the most controversial power that urgency gives governments.
By about 8.30pm on Friday evening, the House was on its last item of business – a committee stage and third reading of the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill.
Apart from being a bit of a tongue twister to pronounce, the word judicature refers to the administration of justice by courts and judges. This particular bill would, among other things, increase the number of High Court judges to 60.
The committee stage is short for the committee of the whole house stage, which is the second to last one of a bill’s journey through the House. Its purpose is for MPs to go through the bill line by line and make sure it will do what it promises.
The committee stage is also a last chance for changes to be made before it goes to its third reading debate which acts as a concluding summary of a bill and final chance for MPs to put their support or opposition on record. These changes are made through amendments.
During the Judicature (Timeliness) Legislation Amendment Bill’s committee stage, Labour’s Greg O’Connor proposed an amendment that would allow for a more flexible range on the number of judges (60-65). He said it “made more sense than coming back with a bill every time you wanted to increase the numbers even by one.”
It’s common in a committee stage for the minister, who sits in the chair at the table in the middle of the chamber to address any amendments, usually adding why they won’t be adopting them if they are proposed by the opposition.
In reaction to O’Connor’s amendment, Minister for Courts Nicole McKee said it was to do with costs.
“The High Court judges are paid through a permanent legislative authority, which is held in section 1351 of the Senior Courts Act 2016. The judges’ remuneration is set independently by the remuneration authority to maintain judicial independence, and so we need to think about that every time we add numbers to the cap because it means that there has to be an appropriation put aside for that number.”
All proposed amendments (that are ruled in order) are then voted on at the end of each clause or section.
Perhaps as a result of urgency fatigue, when it came to the vote on O’Connor’s amendment, no party called for a follow up recorded vote, meaning the Opposition amendment was agreed to, making it part of the bill.
The plan under urgency had been to move immediately into the third reading, which is the final stage before a bill passes.
Instead, at the end of the committee stage, the government ended urgency prematurely, meaning MPs were free to go home after four long days of debating bills.
Had the House proceeded immediately to the third reading, the amendment would have been locked in. After that point, there would be no easy way to correct the bill. “You’d need amending legislation,” [the Clerk of the House David] Wilson explained. “There is no way back once you start down that path.”
The mechanism the government can use to fix an error like this is sending it back to the committee stage (recommitting) When the bill next appears on the Order Paper for its third reading, it can be recommitted “just to focus on one issue, if there’s just one mistake to fix, and that’s normally the case,” Wilson said.
The bill now sits on the order paper scheduled for its third reading until the government decides to return to it. When it does, the House will likely go back into the committee stage to revisit the clause on High Court judge numbers.
Wilson said that there are risks that come with urgency, especially when MPs have spent consecutive late nights debating legislation.
“Your normal options of only being able to do a bill through one stage in a day means [there is] usually a little bit more time to spot it [compared to under urgency]. Luckily for the government, in this case, they did spot it, and they had time to put the brakes on before it had its third reading”
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