In the foreseeable future, each week of Parliament will include an extra morning sitting, as the Government looks to get through a busy agenda of legislation.
Following a three-week break, Parliament resumes today for a three-week block, with a particularly industrious second part of the Parliament year planned out.
Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
“The first part of the year, we’ve had a lot of legislation at the select committee, and working its way through the public consultation process,” the Government’s Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins explained.
“As that legislation makes its way back into the House that takes up quite a lot of House time. So we are expecting to do extended sittings, that means parliament will sit one morning a week - we normally only sit in the afternoons and evenings.
“So we’ll be sitting one morning a week for the foreseeable future just to give us that extra few hours a week to get through more of that legislative programme.”
One of the first Bills up deals with New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement with the UK.
“When the government signs a trade agreement on behalf of New Zealand it gets referred to a select committee who have a hearing and can consider the trade agreement itself.
“There’s already a good degree of cross-the-house support for the agreement in total. This (legislation) will deal with the particular parts of the trade agreement,” Hipkins explained.
Where there’s likely to be less general support in the House is at the committee stage of the Three Strikes Legislation Repeal Bill.
“I expect there’ll be a lot of debate,” he said in recognition that the opposition National and ACT parties support retaining the Three Strikes law. The law says that if you are convicted of a third serious violent offence, then you must be given the maximum penalty for that offence without parole.
“In reality it hasn’t worked. We know from international evidence that this kind of approach doesn’t work. It leads to perverse and unfair outcomes. Actually what we’ve got to be much more focussed on is crime prevention.”
Other bills down to be debated this week include the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Bill at the committee stage, and the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill which is also at committee stage.
As well, the first reading of the Aotearora New Zealand Public Media Bill continues. Hipkins expects this legislation, which provides for the merger of RNZ and TVNZ, to get a good working over in terms of public submissions.
“I’m expecting the committee will be getting a lot of interest in that. It’s a topical thing, I think people are always interested in developments in the media. It capitres people;s imaginations. S we’re expecting that there will be a good select committee process around that one.”
Meanwhile, aspecial debate will take place this week, on the Petition of the Citizens Advice Bureau New Zealand: Leave no-one behind—Campaign to address digital exclusion.
