As Parliament begins each new week, we chat through the agenda with the minister who sets it for the Government; the Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins.
This week’s Order Paper illustrates that there are a wide variety of possible reasons behind the crafting of new legislation. Sometimes those purposes are obvious, sometimes they are more subtle.
We asked Chris Hipkins to outline the varying purposes and motivations that often lead to legislation. Off the top of his head he ran through a number of them - there are more than you might think.
Chris Hipkins speaks in an urgent debate on the travel bubble Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
For a run through some of the other highlights of the legislative week see the article here.
Here are the broad categories that Chris Hipkins outlined as motivations for bills:
An issue arises
“Sometimes issues arise, and the government of the day has to respond to those issues. So the policy will be determined, a bill will be drafted, it'll make its way through the legislative process.”
This week’s example is the Arms (Licence Holders' Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill. Chris Hipkins explains the issue that arose and needed fixing:
“So in this case, …Parliament made a decision back in the 1990s …to do away with lifetime firearms licences, and move to a 10 year licence. What that means is that everyone whose lifetime licence was unilaterally expired in 1992 comes up for renewal every 10 years in a big block, and that creates a real challenge for the police who have to process those. And it's even more of a challenge for the police to process those now, because of the Royal Commission recommendations about adding more rigour to the firearms licensing process. So this Bill says ‘let's be pragmatic about that, let's say that rather than everybody's licence expiring, when it should have, if somebody has applied for a new licence, then the existing licence will remain in place until the new licence application is either declined or it's renewed’.
The tidying, fixing and clarifying administrative bills
“So this is where we just need to keep the statute book up to date from time to time. You know, sometimes policy decisions overlap on top of one another, and the statute book can become a little messy. And so there'll be tidying up legislation all of the time.”
But that’s not the only kind of admin bill.
“Mistakes get made in the legislative process that (even though it's relatively rigorous), you never pick up everything. And so there'll be points of clarity.
“Sometimes a court ruling, …might highlight that there's a discrepancy or a weakness in legislation.”
“And sometimes bills will have sunset clauses within them.” So they would cease to have any power or purpose unless revivified.
Making policy flesh
“Then there'll be the significant policy decisions. So this is where a government comes in, any government, and they'll say ‘we're doing a significant reform program in a particular area’.
“Sometimes those reform bills can be years and years in the making. So there can be a huge amount of policy work.
Sometimes these policy bills are ideologically driven, (say the result of a political party’s electoral promises). But Chris Hipkins points out that isn’t always the case.
“Sometimes, they willl be based on a particular political set of views, other times a really extensive process.”
As an example of this Chris Hipkins points to the huge body of work carried out over the last few years by David Parker to reform the Resource Management Act.
“It was clear, across the Parliament, everyone was frustrated by the RMA. David Parker’s run extensive processes… to undertake a really significant reform programme. That’s going to result in multiple different bills coming to Parliament to replace the Reform Management Act. That’s a huge amount of work, so these things don’t happen overnight.”
Consequential legislation
That’s ‘as a consequence of something’, not ‘the opposite of inconsequential’.
“We've got an example of that this week, where the government of the day enters into an agreement or enters into an undertaking that requires legislation in order to fulfil that commitment.”
In this case that is the bill related to the United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement.
“Many of the things we sign up to in free trade agreements don't require legislation through the house, sometimes they'll require regulatory change. Other times, they're just committing us to doing things. But in many free trade agreements, there's a legislative flow-on where the parliament has to change the primary law, they can be relatively comprehensive.”
Revision (and started-as-revision) bills
“There is a process for revision bills, which is where you don't make any policy changes, you just tidy up in an area of law, which has become a bit untidy on the statute books. The older the acts, typically the more times that will have been amended, and the more it is in need of a start-to-finish rewrite.”
However, Hipins points out that often once you begin a revision bill you encounter elements of the legislation that will require a policy decision to be made - and suddenly it’s not entirely a revision bill anymore. Now it has new policy decisions inside it.
Matching bills
A bill that is written to match, outflank, or improve a bill suggested by another political party, sometimes as a member’s bill.
“Any member of parliament can put forward a member's bill and you can end up with bills that effectively do something similar [to your own policy intentions]. And then the Government has the choice as to: whether it produces its own legislation, whether it votes for, or against various member's bills.”
This week, for example, there are two very similar bills aimed at widening the time-period when Maori can switch between Maori and General Electoral Rolls. One bill is a member’s bill from Rawiri Waititi, the other from the Government.
Chris Hipkins points out another example of the same thing that might also get a debate this week. This time the matching bill is a promissory twinkle in a minister's eye, rather than being available for direct comparison.
“There's also another bill around the sale and supply of alcohol put forward by Chloe Swarbrick, which will be a conscience vote. But the government has a view that the Bill doesn't necessarily do the right things, but that there is a need for legislation.
“And so the Minister of Justice [Kiri Allan] has foreshadowed that there'll be some government legislation coming along shortly as well. And so that's one of the things that members will factor-in when they decide how to vote. Do they want to vote for this bill, even if they agree with most of it, but not all of it? Or do they want to vote against this bill and then potentially vote for the government bill.”
