Urgency is a tool the government can use to speed up the progress of legislation. File picture. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Parliament passed an immediate change to New Zealand's adoption laws this week, progressing the Adoption Amendment Bill through all stages after it was added to the government's urgency agenda at short notice.
Urgency is a tool the government can use to speed up the progress of legislation. It allows longer sitting days and skips the usual stand-down periods between the different stages of a bill. It also allows a bill to skip the select committee process.
Under Parliament's Standing Orders, the government must explain why urgency is being used, and will usually outline which bills will be debated as part of it.
According to Leader of the House Chris Bishop, who requested the urgency, the Adoption Amendment Bill needed immediate progression to "prevent adoptions from proceeding where the safety of children could be at risk, and to ensure no new applications are lodged between the bill's introduction and Royal assent, as applications would otherwise take a significant time to process once the legislation is enacted."
The law change itself is intended as a temporary fix, in response to what the government says are currently unsafe adoption settings. The minister in charge of the bill, Nicole McKee, said during the bill's first reading that the law did not have enough protections and because of this, "some children and young people adopted from overseas end up facing neglect, abuse, or exploitation here in New Zealand".
The Adoption Amendment Bill wasn't originally on the House's agenda this week. While the government gave the opposition some notice of their intent to change the law, opposition MPs had only a short time to prepare, receiving a copy of the bill on Tuesday morning for a Tuesday afternoon debate.
Protecting young people from exploitation is not a contentious issue, so all parties supported the bill's intent. But even when a bill's intention has unanimous support, opposition MPs still have a duty to interrogate its drafting and efficacy.
Perhaps nowhere is a more ample opportunity for this than during the Committee of the Whole House stage, where a bill is picked apart section by section, and MPs can quiz the minister in detail.
Given the short notice, opposition MPs likely had to skim-read the bill and respond to what was in front of them on the page. So instead of finger-pointing and grilling the minister, the committee stage was more of a candid examination of the legislative intent.
Committee stages often feature a familiar cast of Parliament's former jurists and practitioners of detail. On this occasion, MPs like Labour's Vanushi Walters and Duncan Webb, and the Greens' Lawrence Xu-Nan were asking about the definitions of the terminology that appear frequently in the bill.
"'The bill does not apply to overseas adoptions within the scope of the Hague Convention,'" noted Webb. "That's what the explanatory note says, but then, if you go to clause 4, 'Interpretation' - section 2 amended - it defines a Hague Convention adoption as 'an adoption to which the Hague Convention applies that took place in a contracting State in respect of which the adopted child was habitually resident overseas and in respect of which the adopted parent is, or both adopted parents are, habitually resident in New Zealand.' ... In terms of the recognition of overseas adoption, I'm just a little confused. Basically, does it mean that we do or don't recognise adoptions where all of the parties at the time of the adoption were resident overseas?"
The absence of political point-scoring made for a palpably more collegial affair than is sometimes the case at the committee stage; less of a cross-examination, and more of a legislative focus group.
In response to Webb's line of inquiry around definitions, McKee conceded that she too had experienced confusion.
"I've spent a little bit of time myself trying to get it into my head about how this will operate, but effectively, the suspension is going to apply to 'New Zealand citizens living and habitually resident overseas'. Now there's a thing here about the wording. I originally had wanted to use those that were 'ordinarily resident' but actually got told I can't use that word - or I shouldn't use that word - because 'habitually resident' works better and there is a definition for that in other legislation, so we have used habitually resident."
In the game of politics, where questions are so often loaded and answers are so often avoided, MPs may well have found it refreshing to experience a relatively productive and cordial committee stage, with Lawrence Xu-Nan, in the third and final reading, expressing his appreciation for the minister's engagement and honesty during the committee stage.
Other bills under urgency this week
Following the completion of the Adoption Amendment, the government moved on to four first readings:
- The Defence (Workforce) Amendment Bill, which streamlines the process of armed forces personnel filling in for civilian staff when said staff are participating in industrial action. This bill is now with the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for consideration and is currently taking submissions.
- The Local Government (Auckland Council) (Transport Governance) Amendment Bill, which creates an Auckland Transport committee that will have equal representation of councillors and ministerial appointees. This bill is also now open for submissions.
- The Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill restricts vendors from placing a surcharge on all PayWave transactions. It is now with the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which is currently taking submissions on the Bill.
- The Income Tax (FamilyBoost) Amendment Bill, which was progressed through all stages and is pending Royal Assent, will soon be law. It expands the eligibility criteria and credit amount available through the FamilyBoost scheme.
The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme - Forestry Conversion) Amendment Bill also passed through their remaining stages during urgency.
The House was in urgency working through all these bills until Wednesday evening, with the government returning to the Order Paper for Thursday's sitting day agenda.
To listen to the audio version of this story, along with other happenings from Parliament this week, click the link near the top of the page.
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