During a briefer than usual urgent sitting in Parliament this week, multiple bills were progressed through multiple stages each in what would normally take a couple of sitting weeks of debate.
During a swift urgent sitting in Parliament this week, multiple bills were progressed through multiple stages each, including six bills which reached completion in what would normally take a couple of sitting weeks worth of debate.
Among them was a Bill whose committee stage alone would have been expected to take days to get through, the Therapeutic Products Bill. While there's a sense here of a government getting busy tying up loose ends before the 53rd Parliament term soon expires, there's also a bit more to this burst of productivity.
Health Minister Ayesha Verrall
When the Government sent out its legislative plan for the Parliamentary week, as it usually does on Monday, it advised that the plan was to go into urgency on Tuesday and continue in that mode for the rest of the week in order to get through a whole bunch of legislation.
Sitting hours on subsequent days would be extended to include mornings and stretching until midnight. Typically urgency lasts through Thursday. But this week's sitting under urgency wrapped up unusually early on Wednesday night.
The Therapeutic Products Bill drew over 16-thousand submissions to the health select committee. Most of these opposed aspects of the Bill. The Health Minister Ayesha Verrall acknowledged this, and the Government made some amendments to the new regulations. By the time the Bill got to the Committee of the whole House stage this week, there were eleven parts and a whole lot of little details to be worked through.
Surprisingly, the committee stage went pretty quickly. Despite extensive panel beating undertaken around this Bill at the select committee suggesting things would go long and testy, MPs kept their speeches fairly short and were in no mood to drag things out, as the shadow Leader of the house, National's Michael Woodhouse, observed.
"Well, I remember a day when the Labour members would be up like meerkats if a National Government had introduced a bill as bad as this. In fact, they never did. They were up like meerkats when we introduced good legislation and they would drag out committee stages under urgency. But in the hours that we have been debating this bill... we haven't heard a dickie bird from the Health Committee members from Labour or any other member of the Labour caucus, and I reckon that's because they know it's a bit of a dog," Woodhouse said.
Actually it's also quite normal for government MPs to stay quiet during a committee stage. The minister essentially answers questions on their behalf. …