It’s another busy week at Parliament which encompasses a couple of extra mornings sitting time, as the Government puts its foot down to get stuff done before the house rises at the end of this month.
It includes a special debate about the report of the Regulations Review Committee on Covid-19. This specialist committee, which is chaired by an Opposition MP, plays an important role in Parliament’s scrutiny of government use of secondary legislation, or regulations, as the government’s Leader of the House, Grant Robertson explained while discussing the shape of the sitting week with The House.
Grant Robertson Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
“So the government obviously performs a number of tasks, and included in that is making laws - they get debated, they get sent off to a parliamentary select committee to be analysed. But an awful lot of what the government does is done through regulation. So this is often a power that is established in a law, but the actual execution of it is done through a regulation that doesn’t necessarily get the full scrutiny all the time that a law going through Parliament would,” he said.
“So the Regulations Review Committee performs a really important role, and it especially did that in and around Covid. Because in Covid times in order to be able to make decisions quickly, we often used regulatory powers and in fact passed special legislation to enable us to do that.
“So during Covid, the Regulations Review Committee was doing its job looking at each regulatory change. They also have done a report looking at the whole Covid period, trying to see what we can learn from that period for how we deal with emergency situations, pandemics and so on, via that regulatory lens.”
Judith Collins watched by colleagues Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Parliament makes provision for a number of special debates each year, and this one was granted by the Business Committee upon the request of the Regulations Review Committee which is chaired by National MP Judith Collins.
“It was granted because I think everybody understands the significance of what was done during Covid, and we do want to make sure we learn the lessons from it,” Robertson said.
The debate is to be held on Thursday afternoon.
