The coalition Government has used urgency to pass laws all in one go — skipping a step that asks for the public’s feedback — at least 22 times since it was elected, according to Parliament’s records.
Parliamentary Library data provided to Q+A shows the coalition is nearing the previous 17-year record of 28 bills passed this way in one term — set in the 53rd Parliament by Labour.
It comes as the Government passed legislation to raise the threshold to make a pay equity claim. The change was announced last Tuesday morning, introduced in Parliament a few hours later, and passed by Wednesday evening.
The short timeframe meant that formal avenues for public feedback through a select committee process were missed.
Political commentator, pollster, and former National Party staffer David Farrar has long advocated against the overuse of Parliamentary urgency.
“I have not seen and can’t see from a public policy point of view how you justify saying we’re not going to let the public have a say,” Farrar said of the pay equity reforms.
Farrar said, in his mind, there were a few types of urgency.
The first was for time-sensitive law changes that were “uncontroversial” — for example, fixing a legislative mistake that could see a thousand prisoners going free.
He said the second type was reversing a previous government’s laws after an election, where the repeals were publicised during the campaign and a select committee process had been completed previously.
Farrar felt this was slightly more controversial, but acceptable.
“This one (changes to the pay equity claims scheme) is a bit different though. This is ‘we don’t want this issue around for six months’.”
One effect of last week’s lawmaking was the precedent it set for future governments, he said.
“Let’s be honest, all governments at times have used urgency in a way that’s not great… you’ve lost that moral right to complain, to a degree, if the other party does it when they’re in government.”
MPs could come together to raise the threshold for triggering urgency, but “there’s a reason they haven’t done that”, Farrar said.
Integrity Institute director and political commentator Bryce Edwards said last week’s expedited lawmaking “doesn’t really set a new precedent about how urgency has been used or abused”.
“For a long time, governments just keep on increasing their use of urgency.”
He said there needed to be cross-party agreement “not to abuse this sort of mechanism”.
“When governments push through legislation, when they use urgency, they often make bad law,” Edwards said.
“That’s because there’s not enough scrutiny, there’s not enough accountability on those things and mistakes get made.
“More than that, I think it’s a real recipe for the public not really being listened to… and normally that tilts the field in favour of vested interests. It’s the insiders, it’s the lobbyists, it’s the well-funded business that often have the ear of the government.”
But there was a risk that academics and constitutional lawyers were more worried about urgency than the public, he said.
“There’s a great public desire to see things get done. The public’s more interested in decisive action at the moment than they are with constitutional niceties.”
Constitutional law expert and Otago University associate professor Edward Willis said the use of urgency around pay equity was particularly concerning because it was retrospective in that it affected current claims.
“When they’re [the public] affected by legislation, they deserve a chance to participate in lawmaking. That’s what concerns the public most about the continuing and increasing use of urgency.”
But he didn’t agree with ideas that would raise the threshold for governments to trigger urgency because it needed to remain flexible for emergencies.
“The current threshold is that the government of the day has to give a reason for the use of urgency.
“When that happens, we should all be very sceptical and quite judgmental about the quality of those reasons.”
Willis said the best check against the excessive use of urgency was political, through the public’s reaction.
“Credible governments don’t fear good process,” he said.
“So when you see governments consistently relying on process shortcuts, particularly in constitutionally concerning situations and particularly when the effect is the public is being left out of the conversation, I think we really need to ask why.
“A credible government doesn’t need to rely on these sorts of tricks if it believes in its policies. [If it] believes in its ability to govern the nation effectively, then it should use the standard processes that we all expect it to.”
Who uses urgency?
The MPs criticising the use of urgency last week used it, sometimes liberally, when in Government. In late November 2022, the Labour government rushed 24 bills through various steps of the legislative process.
Then-leader of the house Chris Hipkins said it was necessary after some House sitting time was lost when the Queen died in September.
One of the 24 bills debated under urgency included legislation relating to Labour’s Three Waters reforms. Then-opposition leader Christopher Luxon said the speedy process was “irresponsible” and “completely mad”.
On Tuesday, Hipkins said: “I am absolutely appalled that up until a few hours ago, no New Zealander knew anything about this.
“Yet Parliament is about to go into urgency to ram through a law change to extinguish the pay equity claims affecting tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people up and down the country.”
Current Leader of the House Chris Bishop criticised Labour’s passing of the legislation underpinning Covid-19 vaccine mandates in November 2021.
“The House is about to pass one of the most far-reaching and significant pieces of legislation that this Parliament will consider, and the House has had precisely 24 hours to look at it — 24 hours for the first reading, the second reading, the committee of the whole House stage, and now the third reading.
“As Dr Dean Knight of Victoria University, that very fine law school, says, it is a constitutional disgrace,” Bishop said at the time.
Hipkins then questioned why opposition parties were complaining about urgency while they were also grumbling about how slow the Government was moving on Covid-19.
Last week, Bishop said urgency was necessary for the pay equity bill “to provide legal clarity as soon as practicably possible”.
Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden said part of the reason for the speedy process was because the Government didn’t “want to create a fear of multiple systems at the same time” and have “people trying to put in claims before the government tried to change the law”.
Meanwhile, ACT’s David Seymour said his deputy leader had saved the government billions of dollars in the Budget because of the change.
In April 2019, when Parliament was debating tightening gun laws shortly after the Christchurch terrorist attacks, Seymour said: “I urge caution. I urge public consultation. I urge that we do our job as a Parliament and truly honour the victims of this tragedy by defending our democracy and our due process of public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny and making good laws.”
Parliament’s rules currently state that ministers can make a motion to use urgency, which is passed via a simple majority. Ministers must give a reason for urgency when making the motion. Urgency must only be used when the Government “genuinely needs to use an urgent approach”.
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand on Air
