Photo: VNP/Louis Collins
The government's plan for Parliament's final full week of the year moved 12 different proposed laws through 32 stages of approval.
Included in the plan is fixing an error made by tired government MPs during the previous long week of urgency, when they voted for an opposition amendment and, even when prompted, failed to notice the error.
Watching this week's endless debating it appeared on Thursday that another more egregious error had occurred. It seemed that a minister had forgotten to include key aspects within an amendment bill, and so ask a select committee to add them back in.
However, it was no mistake. Paul Goldsmith had purposefully omitted some disallowed measures from the Crimes Amendment Bill, in order that they could be added back in as an addendum by the Justice Select Committee, in order to dodge the usual rules about what is allowed.
It certainly looked like a mistake at the time. We wrongly reported it as such. Opposition MPs in the House lambasted the minister, Paul Goldsmith, for the "disgrace" of the muck-up. Oddly, no-one from National, including Goldsmith, explained the maneuver or pointed out that Opposition MPs were incorrect in claiming their colleague was a "part-time minister" who couldn't get his ducks in a row. This was taken by us at face value.
In fact, Goldsmith's office has since confirmed that the last minute addition of an extra section to the Crimes Amendment Bill on Thursday was planned. It seems it was a move meant to dodge Parliament rules about what can be included in a bill, so as to include measures in the Crimes Amendment Bill that had been ruled outside its scope and therefore not allowed.
Keeping bills coherent
In the United States, vast bills sometimes include so many random provisions that those voting on them are seldom aware of all the aspects they are approving.
Our Parliament's Standing Orders say that "a bill must relate to one subject area only". Bills here cannot include disconnected policy ambitions or amend multiple pieces of current legislation (Acts) unless they fall within the rules for Omnibus Bills.
The Crimes Amendment Bill contained a ragtag collection of amendments to the Crimes Act. However the minister also wanted to include amendments to the Summary Offences Act. That is not possible unless all the amendments to both bills achieve a single policy objective - they do not. Or unless permission has been given by Parliament's cross-party Business Committee.
Parliament's sovereignty as a workaround
Parliament is sovereign. It makes its own rules. It can also give itself permission to break them, via a simple majority vote in the House. It is this ability that Goldsmith took advantage of when he moved "that the Justice Committee's powers be extended under Standing Order 298(1) to consider the amendments set out in Amendment Paper 436 in my name, and, if it sees fit, to recommend amendments accordingly, despite Standing Order 264(2)".
Asking for permission for a select committee to do something outside the rules is not unusual. But usually it is only that the committee can meet outside its usual hours, or outside Wellington or something else relatively inconsequential.
Of course, governments always have a majority and so can always win such votes, regardless of an opposition's protests.
Allowing a committee to add in unrelated provisions to a bill is not common. Certainly not as a dodge. It may be entirely novel. It seems like a potentially dangerous manoeuvre that could lead New Zealand towards the shambolic American style of pick 'n' mix legislation.
As an observer, and admittedly someone fooled by what happened in the chamber, what strikes me as especially odd is that Goldsmith never outlined his plan, and that his colleagues did not defend their minister against the attacks of incompetence. Having moved the instruction to the Select Committee and sat down, he could not take a second 'call' himself, but he could have asked another National MP to rebut the attacks. He did not.
The presumption is that his colleagues present did not know of his plans, and that he was either not bothered by the attacks or preferred to be seen as bungling than seen as using Parliament's rules and processes to out-manoeuvre its rules' intentions.
*RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.
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