An unusually long sitting block begins today at Parliament, beginning with another repeal of law passed by the previous government.
An unusually long sitting block commences today at Parliament, with the Government resuming its repeals of legislation passed by the previous government.
This week is the start of a four-week sitting block, which is a bit unusual. It's been several years since Parliament has sat for more than the usual chunks of two or three weeks at a time. The Government will go into urgency today to move various bills through, resurfacing for the regular day for Member's Bills on Wednesday, and later in the week a bunch of the remaining maiden speeches for MPs new to Parliament after October's election.
Labour MP Kieran McAnulty, the Shadow Leader of the House
Four-weeker
If the prolonged government coalition negotiations didn't hold things up enough already, Parliament had only resumed for a week at the end of January following the long summer holiday when it subsequently went into recess again, adding to the sense that the start of this Parliamentary term has been fractured. So the shortest of blocks is now followed by the longest, with the Shadow Leader of the House, Labour's Kieran McAnulty, admitting to being surprised that the National-led government has opted for the longer block.
"The whole idea of a four-week block was brought in, I think, when Chris Hipkins was Leader of the House back in 2018, and was quickly got rid of because it's not very popular with MPs. I'm pretty sure the staff don't really like it either, and it's pretty hard for any government to have enough legislation lined up to fill four weeks. So we were surprised that they brought it back, but happy to go along with it. Let's see whether they can fill it in," McAnulty said.
Water works
First up on the Order Paper, after a motion for urgency is moved by the Government, is the debate through all stages of the Water Services Acts Repeal Bill which will dismantle the previous Government's so-called Three Waters legislation that was passed last year.
While the Coalition Government hasn't tabled a replacement regime yet, the Local Government Minister Simeon Brown said the Government is working on this, and that it would recognise "the importance of local decision-making and flexibility for communities and councils to determine how their water services will be delivered in future"…