The House

It was a sad day at Parliament on Thursday, with the news of the sudden death of Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp. Before adjourning, The House paid tribute to her in a number of speeches.

Parliament's focus this week is debating numerous bills under urgency. Across recent parliaments the use of urgency and extra sittings has become so regular as to be almost normal. But it remains important to know what laws are being debated and agreed – at whatever speed.

The first item of business at Parliament this week was not Question Time, but a Ministerial Statement on the Middle East situation.

On the Sunday Edition of the House you can hear an interview with Lawrence Xu-Nan about Scrutiny Week and the preparation necessary. You can also listen to a description of a few of the Q&A tactics observed in the scrutiny hearings.

Scrutiny week is partly information-sharing and partly a partisan bear-pit. When Parliament undertakes governance of governments there are always tactics and politics involved.

Foreign Affairs is a portfolio that Winston Peters often receives bi-partisan congratulations on. In an otherwise adversarial scrutiny week, his hearing with the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee had a bastion of amicability and trust.

This week at Parliament is Estimates Scrutiny week, when Ministers face Select Committees to defend their budget plans. We talk with Green MP, Lawrence Xu-Nan, a star scrutiny performer from last time round. As a former academic and one of a number of MPs with a PhD, Xu-Nan has the brutal research experience that is surely useful for digging into something as labyrinthine and esoteric as a budget.

For electorate M Ps, weekends are generally spent in the community meeting constituents. The House popped into a morning tea Q&A hosted by Matt Doocey.

Parliament and the Courts are different branches of our democracy. On Thursday, during the debate on MP punishments they overlapped.

The Government had three things on its to-do list for the week. It managed... some of them, including the one that allows its own continued survival.

This week the Health Committee heard oral submissions on the Government's Medicines Amendment Bill, which speeds up the approvals process for medication.

Parliament, with an early history saturated in alcohol, has had no in-house bar at all for months. It seems almost no-one even noticed. The new bar, Pint of Order, has now opened and its dinky size may show just how much Parliament has changed.

The House chats with two long serving MPs to get some insight into some of the political strategy behind member’s bills

After the first few speeches of the Budget Debate, the House knuckled down for a long and jam-packed dose of urgency.

The opening stanzas of a new budget begin in quiet formality, but get loud and political quickly.