Misusing urgency

by frog

Since taking office, the National Government has been using urgency with a vengeance. As of today, Parliament has sat for a little over 548 hours. Of these hours, 35% has been under urgency. What does this mean? Due process is condensed, legislation is ill-considered, and the opposition has little time to read let alone apply any rigour to the process. No Right Turn has labelled this National Government “the fastest legislature in the West.”

No other Parliament has come close to this use of urgency in recent times, the closest being during the second term of the Fifth Labour Government which called for urgency 21% of sitting time from 2002-2005.

With very few checks and balances in our unicameral Parliament, it’s vital our already streamlined legislative process is not rushed. Fast law is bad law. Is the problem of boy-racers so bad that we needed to accord urgency to the passage of the Vehicle Confiscation and Seizure Bill?

A quick look back in the history books shows that urgency was first used on July 21, 1903 when Premier Richard Seddon moved that urgency be taken to put the Rotokare Domain Bill through all its stages. Seddon was moving quickly to protect the destruction of native forest by settlers in a “beauty spot” of great significance to Maori. By 12:05am the following day, the law was passed and the “vandalism” halted.

The first recorded use of urgency in New Zealand was for environmental protection. Sadly, it didn’t create a lasting precedent…but Rotokare remains.