Parliament has the flexibility to make extra provision for applying scrutiny to legislation or government policy.
We’ll see it in action this week during an extended sitting when Special Debate will take place on a couple of items, notably the Natural and Built Environments Bill exposure draft, a look at embryonic legislation to replace the rather bruised Resource Management Act before it’s even had a first reading, which is quite unusual.
Chris Hipkins speaks in an urgent debate on the travel bubble Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
“Reform of the Resource Management Act is one of the most complex areas of law, and likely to be one of the most controversial as well,” said the Government’s Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins.
“So what the government’s done in this particular case is actually produce an exposure draft of a bill and allow a committee to look at it, and poke it and prod it, and hear from people on it before it’s even formally introduced.
“So this week, we’re going to be debating the report of the select committee on the draft of the bill. Normally a select committee would look at a bill once it’s been introduced and once it’s making its way through the legislative process.
“But in this case, they’ve just been looking at a draft. Now that bill will still go through the full normal process as well,” he explained.
“This really is making sure that for a topic that’s really complex, really controversial, that there’s as much public scrutiny and debate as possible.”
The Special Debate provision has been made possible following the last regular review of Parliament’s standing Orders after the last parliamentary term.
The length of the allocated debate for the annual Budget has been reduced from 15 hours to 8 hours because, as Hipkins conceded, after a couple of days “it starts to get repetitive”. The extra time freed up is now provided for Special Debates to “ensure other areas of government activity are being given the air time they deserve”.
“Particularly where select committees have done a body of work that’s been reported back to the house that otherwise wouldn’t be debated. Sometimes those select committee reports are actually really rich in content for a good, informative, useful debate.”
