Parliament’s to do list: fuel market investigations and banning letting fees

Every week MPs work through legislation and the order in which they do it is decided by the Leader of the House Chris Hipkins.

It’s a rough plan but this week they’ll likely tackle a bill that will allow the Government to investigate the fuel market and a bill banning letting fees for tenants.

An outline for this week (16-18 October) is below.

MPs are required to be at Parliament for scheduled sitting days, so called because MPs sit in those green leather chairs when they’re in the debating chamber. An agenda known as the Order Paper is published online each sitting day outlining what business the House plans to get through. But things change and time is limited so below is what they’ll try their best to do.

Investigating fuel prices (Tuesday and Wednesday)

What:

• The committee stage and third reading of the Commerce Amendment Bill

• The bill makes a couple of changes including introducing a competition studies regime (the fuel market is the first target), increased regulation of airports if required, and updating the alternative enforcement mechanisms available to the Commerce Commission.

The Unpronounceable Trade Agreement (Tuesday and Wednesday)

What:

• The committee stage and third reading of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

• The CPTPP is a trade and investment agreement between 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region: New Zealand, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

• The CPTPP was previously known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). That treaty was renamed and tinkered with after the United States withdrew in January 2017.

Why:

• The House has previously debated the Foreign Affairs Select Committee’s report on the Treaty but not the legislation enabling the Treaty itself. The debate on treaties is shared between the treaty itself and the law to enable it. This is the latter and is now well underway.

The Fibre Aftermath (Tuesday and Thursday)

What:

• The committee stage/third reading of the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill. The bill was brought to Parliament under the previous government and picked up by the current one.

• It introduces a new outline for the regulation of fibre fixed-line services from 2020, while retaining copper fixed-line regulations where no fibre alternatives are available.

• It also extends consumer safeguards, streamlines response to competition problems, especially in the cellular market, and provides more oversight of retail service quality.

Why:

• The Bill describes itself as regulatory changes “needed in view of the major growth in fibre network services and the relative decline in copper fixed line services.”

Rejigging the Courts (Tuesday)

What:

• The committee stage of the  Courts Matters Bill.

• This Bill together with the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill will help update the courts and tribunals systems. Both bills were introduced just before the 2017 election by the previous government.

• These are both omnibus bills, which means that it will make changes to more than one Act.

Why:

• The courts system is complicated and needs reasonably regular rejigging to try and keep it working as efficiently as possible. This is one of those rejigs.

• This is the kind of ‘machinery of government’ legislation that is mostly agreed on across Parliament as being necessary.

• Here are rundowns on the many changes that the Courts Matters and the Tribunals Powers bills will make.

Tribunals Rejig (Tuesday)

What:

• The committee stage of the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill.

• This Bill together with the Courts Matters Bill (above) will help update the courts and tribunals systems.

• These are both omnibus bills, which means that they will change lots of laws that already exist.

• Also - because these two bills are closely related they have been deemed cognate bills and have been debated together in earlier stages. This saves everyone from having nearly the same debate twice.

Why:

• The courts system is complicated and needs regular rejigging to keep it working as efficiently as possible. This is one of those rejigs.

• Here are rundowns on the many changes that the Courts Matters and the Tribunals Powers bills will make.

Taupatupatu Whānui - General Debate (every Wednesday after Question Time, at about 3pm)

What:

• Twelve speeches of up to five minutes in length after question time on Wednesdays in the House. Speeches are divvied up proportionally so bigger parties get more speeches. Because Ministers aren’t counted in the proportional divvy-up, the opposition side of the House gets more speeches than the government side.

Why:

• The general debate is a chance for MPs to bring up issues that would otherwise not come up before the House, making it a wide-ranging debate. Sometimes parties take a coordinated approach and speak on the same issue but there’s no rule that they have to.

Letting tenants off letting fees (Wednesday)

What:

• The second reading of the Residential Tenancies (Prohibiting Letting Fees) Amendment Bill which will prohibit charging tenants a letting fee.

• A bill which has reached its second reading has been to a select committee. The report from the Social Services and Community Committee on this bill can be found here.

Why:

• Letting agents who help landlords find tenants charge a fee for their services but that fee is often passed on to the tenant to pay. The Bill aims to make sure that the costs of letting a property are paid for by the landlord because they are the ones who benefit from the service.

Second Looks at Convictions (Wednesday and Thursday)

What:

• The first reading of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill.  

• This bill creates a new body called the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Its job will be to review both convictions and sentences and decide whether to refer them to the appeal court.

• This body will replace the the power currently exercised by the Governor-General under section 406 of the Crimes Act 1961.  

• There will be between three and seven commissioners who will have considerable powers including deciding their own methods; appointing experts; initiating investigations; requiring information; and even making “thematic inquiries into a practice, policy, procedure or other general matter it considers to be related to miscarriages of justice”.

• The Governor General retains a Royal Prerogative of Mercy, but will be allowed to shunt such requests off to this new commission.

Why:

• This move follows the example of a few European jurisdictions.

• It takes the legwork for reviews away from the Ministry of Justice and gives it to an independent Crown entity - a step further removed.  

• It gives the review body wider power and resources to investigate, and to investigate more widely. Defence lawyers have complained in the past that they have had to all the investigative leg-work themselves.

• Because recommendations to the Governor General will no longer come from the Minister of Justice, politics (or the appearance of politics) is removed from review decisions.

Cartels are not hotels for cars

What:

• The Commerce (Criminalisation of Cartels) Amendment Bill returns from select committee for a second reading.

• The bill amends the Commerce Act to specifically criminalise cartel behaviour.

• It also helpfully outlines what that is:  “A cartel is an anticompetitive arrangement by competitors to do any of the following: fix, control, or maintain prices; establish output restrictions or quotas; share or divide markets by allocating customers, suppliers, territories, or lines of commerce.

Why:

• A review begun in 2010 suggested that there might not be appropriate disincentives for cartels in New Zealand, and out competition regulations might be out of step with international ones regarding cartels.

Tropical retirement (Thursday)

What:

• The second reading of the Social Assistance (Residency Qualification) Legislation Bill

• This bill changes residency qualifications for New Zealand superannuation and the veteran’s pension to be met with residence in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue, or Tokelau.

Why:

• Superannuation, often shortened to Super, is a government pension paid to New Zealanders over the age of 65. To qualify, you have to be a legal resident, have lived in New Zealand for ten years since the age of 20 and five-years since the age of 50.

• New Zealand has close constitutional relationships with the Cook Islands, Niue, and Tokelau (people born there are New Zealand citizens). The Bill will mean that the five-years over 50 residence requirement no longer has to be met by living in New Zealand but can be done in the Cook Islands, Niue, or Tokelau.

Tūpāpaku inquiry outcomes

What:

• The Coroners (Access to Body of Dead Person) Amendment Bill gets a second reading on return from the Maori Affairs Select Committee.

• The bill requires coroners to consider tikanga Māori and the practice of other cultures when deciding whether a family member can stay with a body.

Why:

• Last year the Maori Affairs Select Committee held an inquiry into the intersection of Maori tikanga, and how quickly (or slowly) coroners allow families access to the bodies of the dead.

• This bill enacts a recommendations made by that inquiry.

You can see how much the House gets done each sitting day by going here: Daily progress in the House