The House: Parliament gets urgent on voting rules, climate targets

In its penultimate sitting week of the year, Parliament was flat out, debating 12 different bills - 11 of them under urgency.

The week began with the hype around the Resource Management Act (RMA) announcement, but while two major RMA bills were introduced, they weren't actually debated.

The small RMA-related bill that was debated, which extends certain consents, was contentious mostly because of the urgency and its very late reveal to the opposition.

The big flashpoints came later in the week, with two particularly contentious pieces of legislation debated through Thursday and until nearly 2am Friday, and the other through much of Friday.

The first of them was the Electoral Amendment Bill, back in the House from the Justice Select Committee, and given the urgency treatment for its second reading and committee stage.

The bill proposed some significant changes to general election rules, including shifting the enrolment deadline to 13 days before election day. That meant no more enrolling or updating your details on the day, something 110,000 people did on election day 2023.

The bill would also re-instate a wider ban on prisoner voting.

The government argued the earlier enrolment cut-off was needed to address slow vote-counting times. Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith told the House at second reading that "it now takes a week longer to get the official results after an election than it did prior to 2020.

"It used to take two weeks, now it's three weeks and that's an extra week of uncertainty for New Zealanders."

He said the wait could be even longer, with the reality of coalition negotiations under MMP.

Despite this being the third consecutive evening under urgency, MPs were especially fired-up for this electoral bill. Labour's Ginny Andersen was the first opposition MP to speak on it and immediately set a combative tone.

"Out of all the unethical, shady and dishonest things this government has done, I think this one is possibly the worst," she said, "It's stopping people from voting in the next general election."

Describing the bill as a crafty sandpaper-on-the-cricket-ball-type move designed to tilt the game in the government's favour, Andersen questioned whether the change would even speed up the count.

"The Electoral Commission told the Justice Committee that, even with all the changes present in the bill, there will be no difference between the time it took to count the votes at the previous election and the time it will take in the next election... so that begs the question, why is this bill being passed now?" she said.

Associate Justice Minister and ACT leader David Seymour attempted to flip the 'gaming the system' argument by comparing Labour's 2022 electoral law change, regarding donations, to this week's changes.

"It's only three years ago that many of the people on that side of the House… passed a law that would require the disclosure of donations at a much different threshold than had been done previously, to effectively dox people who supported a party, but didn't want to be publicly revealed for doing so," he said.

"When it was revealed that that change would disproportionately affect the parties that they were about to campaign against, did they say, 'Oh, we're sorry, this is being done through venal motivations?' No, they did not.

"They said, 'It's all about transparency'. Well, they can't have it both ways."

Once the bill's committee stage began, it quickly became clear the opposition planned to make the government work for every clause.

After a long night of speeches and protracted voting, the House didn't adjourn until 1.40am Friday, with the committee stage not actually wrapping up until 11pm.

As specialists in this content, the Justice Committee's MPs, with little sleep, were back in the chamber at 9am to resume where they left off. It capped off an especially gruelling week and year for justice spokespeople, with four justice-related bills put through urgency this week.

Once the Electoral Amendment Bill was finally reported back - and the justice spokespeople had presumably slumped to their offices for a much-needed kip - fresh faces entered the chamber for the other major flashpoint of the week - the Climate Change Response (2050 Target and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

This bill received the VIP urgency treatment, passing through all debating stages, but skipping select committee (meaning no opportunity for public input).

It is a simple bill and primarily amends New Zealand's targeted biogenic methane reduction (from 2017 levels), from a 24-47 percent, to a 14-27 percent by 2050, nearly half the previous target.

It was clear from the first opposition speech that they intended to dig into the methodology behind the new target during the committee stage, once again a hint at a gritty battle to come. Between the electoral reforms and the climate target reset, the two most controversial bills of the week consumed a hefty chunk of Parliament's lengthy sitting time this week, pushing the House into an extra, nearly 15-hour long day of debating on Friday.

RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.

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