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RNZ News
4 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Categories and strategy: The path of Parliament's members' bills
The biscuit tin that members' bills are drawn randomly from at Parliament. Photo: Supplied / Office of the Clerk Some of the most socially significant law in Parliament's history originated as a member's bill. Without luck in the members' bill ballot, it is possible that gay law reform, marriage equality, end-of-life choice, or anti-smacking law reform would have waited years, deemed too controversial. But not all members' bills are social blockbusters. Many have less lofty ambitions. Members' bills often correct gaps in legislation or close loopholes - you might call them tidy-ups. They can also be political statements; to tautoko (support and affirm) party policy, or offer a counter-response to it. Bills that could be seen as examples of this are Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke's Members of Parliament (Duty to Uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi) Legislation Bill / Te Pire mō Te Here ki Te Tiriti o Waitangi, or Hamish Campbell's Gang Free Ports Bill. Members' bills from governing-party back-benchers often have very narrow policy aims, but their very presence has a purpose, to reduce the odds of opposition bills being picked. The House chatted to National's Andrew Bayly and Labour's Phil Twyford (who have a total of 26 years of Parliamentary experience between them), about the political strategy behind what bills go into the ballot. Parliament's agenda is dominated by government bills - legislation agreed by Cabinet and put forward by government ministers to enact government policy. Non-ministers can also propose laws. Any backbench MP (non-minister) can develop an idea for a law change, write a draft bill, and submit it to Parliament's Table Office. Usually that takes the form of a member's bill. (Local bills and private bills are two other types of non-government bills.) The difficult part? Being lucky enough to have your bill drawn from the ballot. Only eight bills are available to debate at a time, from about 90 sitting in the old biscuit tin used to draw the ballot. From Bayly's perspective, members' bills generally fall into one of three types. "The first one," he says, "is backbenchers who see the opportunity to test some thinking, which they might want to put into legislation." Andrew Bayly (file photo) Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith "Secondly, there are sort of additions to existing legislation that people want to seek clarification on, so they might be technical in nature or have some benefit when it comes to interpretation. For instance, [the current law is] not working well, it needs to be improved. "The third [type] are slightly off [from] traditional government thinking, but they are nonetheless maybe the cause of the day, and those are the ones that can extend where we are in terms of debate into new areas, and they are the more adventurous ones." Bayly's counterpart across the aisle, Phil Twyford, reckons members' bills are one of the few opportunities MPs get to break out of the confines of the partisan default they generally follow at Parliament. Phil Twyford (file photo) Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone "Our parliamentary system," Twyford suggests, "is so dominated by political parties that exercise discipline and whip their MPs to vote on a party line. Members' bills have a really important function in our system because they provide a little bit of an outlet. They allow individual MPs to have a go, and to try to get some new law made outside of the party discipline." Twyford suggests that with the introduction of MMP came the hope that lawmaking would be a bit more bipartisan. The reality, he says, is that MPs are still very much locked in to their parties. "I think that members' bills offer a little glimpse of how the world could be a little bit different and a bit more spontaneous, a bit more interesting." Members' bills, while a valuable tool for any MP, perhaps mean that little bit more to opposition MPs, who have less influence in a legislature dominated by the governing parties. This also means, Bayly suggests, that they can "be a bit more adventurous". Of course, being adventurous doesn't always equate to being successful. Members' bills still need to receive a majority of MP votes in the House, which for opposition MPs is rare but certainly not unachievable. Twyford's Labour colleague, Camilla Belich, recently won support for a member's bill that made employer theft of employee wages a crime . Twyford believes it is a bill "the government wouldn't have usually supported". He says that as an opposition MP, "that's kind of a special thing". Belich's bill even split the governing coalition partners (New Zealand First voted with the Opposition in support; National and ACT voted against). Members' bills can be divisive, even within parties, especially if they relate to social or conscience issues. Bayly says those bills have the potential to "cut that social strata right across the whole party, and in many cases, there are certain issues that people have a personal vote on, even within caucuses". Traditionally these personal votes have been for bills relating to alcohol, drugs, religion, sex, abortion and so on, and they can originate from an MP anywhere on the political spectrum. Members' bills are free to deal with all the trickiest issues. They can't do everything though. Bills with ideas that would rely on a big investment of money can be vetoed by the government, even if they are passed in the House. Governments can adopt a member's bill as their own, though it might be changed as part of the process. "[In government] you are sort of tied down into a different type of bill", Bayly says. "For instance, we've just got a new bill around phone (social media) usage and things like that for under-16-year-olds, which has come through, and is actually going to be adopted as a government piece of legislation . It can be quite useful in terms of driving the social agenda, but also government agenda over time." If the government might adopt your bill anyway, why not go straight to the boss with your idea? The answer, Bayly suggests, comes down to the fact that Parliament's legislative agenda is jam-packed. "Traditionally, we pass between about 80 and 100 bills a year, and all ministers are trying to get bills up. A lot of these [members' bills] are outside this normal cycle of going through the update of the regulatory system, and therefore, [members' bills are] a way to interject and make a change much more quickly outside of that cycle." So you've got your bright idea that you want to turn into a member's bill, what next? "This place is very collective and very tribal," Twyford says. "Group discipline is everything and I'm sure it's the same for all the parties. If an individual's got a bright idea, you have to take it to caucus, usually to a caucus committee, and get your colleagues' agreement before you are given the license to go and put it in the biscuit tin." Once your idea is sound, and your colleagues are okay with it, then you put pen to paper, and draft an actual piece of proposed legislation. This is the "nub of the work" in creating a member's bill, Bayly says. "[It's important to] draft it in a way that is appropriate and actually gets to the issue, and as the Parliamentary Counsel Office (which does all the legal drafting here in New Zealand) will tell you, it's pretty hard to do that appropriately." (The Parliamentary Counsel Office only drafts government bills, but MPs can get assistance from the Office of the Clerk for non-government bills.) Once you're satisfied the bill has been drafted "appropriately", (as Bayly put it), you knock on wood, wear your lucky tie, keep a rabbit's foot, and play the waiting game to see if it is drawn from the tin and added to the Order Paper for debate. Some MPs are lucky and get multiple bills picked from the ballot, other MPs pass long careers in Parliament without a single member's bill chosen. If your bill gets drawn and survives a first reading, then Bayly says, "you've got to go into the select committee, and often the [departmental] officials look at your bill and think it's a bit of a nuisance for them and [they] may actually be [against it progressing, as well as there being possible opposition from], government ministers or members. So, you know, it's not an easy road, but it's great when it happens." To listen to the full interview with Phil Twyford and Andrew Bayly, click the link near the top of the page. * RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
23-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Budget 2025: NZ branded 'a fair-weather friend' after climate and aid funding cuts
Photo: RNZ New Zealand's climate financing commitments will decrease from $250 million to $100 million this year, Budget 2025 revealed. At the same time, an injection of $100 million a year into Aotearoa's aid to overseas nations has not stemmed a downward trajectory in aid levels through to 2027. A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ that they will push for more overseas development assistance (ODA) funding next year. "Unfortunately, the previous Labour Government left a $200 million a year fiscal cliff in the ODA budget from January 2026. "As Minister Willis acknowledged in her speech, we argued for more ODA funding than was secured - and will seek more in the next budget cycle. "But the ODA gap left by the previous Labour Government will take more than one budget to fill." Peters' office could not confirm whether this would result in less funding for Pacific nations, both from aid and climate finance. "New Zealand is committed to doing its bit to help the Pacific meet its development needs, including building climate resilience." Labour Party associate foreign affairs spokesperson Phil Twyford called that nonsense. "Governments don't budget in perpetuity for these things. Our Labour government made a four year commitment, and it's up to this government to budget to continue that." "They've overseen a cut of 50% in climate finance, and that's not only letting down our partners in the Pacific, it's also welching on the commitments that we made internationally." A spokesperson for MFAT told RNZ in a statement that future climate finance beyond 2025 will be determined before the end of the year. Photo: RNZ Pacific New Zealand prioritises its Pacific neighbors, providing at least 60 percent of its development funding to the region, according to MFAT. "The Pacific remains the highest priority for the IDC programme, with more than 60 percent allocated to the region. The new $100m a year funding is deliberately focused on the Pacific." "It will allow us to sustain our funding commitment to the Pacific and support their priorities, including resilience to the impacts of climate change." World Vision National Director Grant Bayldon wants the government to be clear on how overall Pacific-targetted aid will change in the years to come. "This is very likely to impact Pacific communities when there's a cut of that size.. it's hard to see it not impacting the Pacific directly." The United Nations has a longstanding target for developed nations to match their ODA to around 0.7 percent of their gross national income. Aotearoa's proportion is set to slip from 0.33 percent in 2023/24 fiscal year to 0.25 percent in 2025/26, to 0.23 percent in 2026/27. That will put aid levels at its lowest proportion since 2016. Based on the OECD's current rankings , it would put New Zealand in the bottom third, just above the United States after the shuttering of their USAID programme. In terms of climate finance, which sits separate from aid, New Zealand has commited to tripling its contribution to around $558 million annually by 2030, according to Oxfam Aotearoa . Oxfam climate justice lead Nick Henry said that Aotearoa now looks set to break it's promise. "We weren't expecting to get it all this year, but we were hoping to see it head in the right direction." "It's going to mean that any new initiatives to support communities with their climate needs are going to be competing with other humanitarian needs, other development needs that are still there in a time of climate crisis." In 2021, the then-Labour government introduced a climate finance package of $1.3 billion between 2022 and 2025. Strategically, at least 50 percent of it was supposed to be dedicated to the Pacific, mostly dedicated to infrastructure and disaster risk planning for climate mitigation. That funding is due to expire next year, but the current government has not reintroduced a new funding package for 2026 onwards. It means that MFAT will have to rely on the remnants of that funding, or $100 million, a $150 million reduction from 2024. Dr Terence Wood, an aid expert out of Australia National University calls this a "fiscal cliff". "More makes it sound like the budget is going up, but all they going to do is prevent the budget from falling as rapidly as it had seemed like it was going to." With the passage of Labour's Zero Carbon Act, the government began to include climate considerations within policy planning and action. This practice, called "climate mainstreaming", has also been applied to aid, where development projects are considered for their direct and indirect impact on emissions reduction or climate adaptation. (MFAT statement) Dr Wood said it is a good idea being used in a bad way when it comes to international development. "For example - they might no longer build schools by the beach, they might move them inland a little bit, or they might strengthen the construction of buildings to take into account increased cyclone frequency." But Dr Wood said that this practice currently allows a project funded by aid could be classified as climate finance if they have some kind of indirect effect, rather than a full focus, on the climate. In doing so, projects that have little to do with cliamte change can be recorded as evidence of action against benchmarked commitments. As a result, they can justify spending less. "New Zealand is desperately trying to make it seem as if the amount of aid that it gives to help countries adapt to climate change is not falling, even though the amount of aid that it is giving to help countries adapt to climate change is actually falling." "I think it's probably one of the reasons why many Pacific politicians view us as something as a fair-weather friend." Bayldon said that World Vision also shares this concern. "I think it's important for for all funders, all governments, to really be up for. And honest about that, how much of the funding is going to climate projects and resist effectively claiming things as climate projects that aren't." An MFAT spokesperson told RNZ that climate outcomes are always considered strongly, and are not undermined. "This includes considering factors such as the climate benefits of the activity, any impacts that climate change could have on achieving outcomes, how the activity itself might negatively impact climate change, and identifying any opportunities to improve resilience and incorporate these into design." "Mainstreaming climate considerations in this way is good development practice."
Scoop
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Labour Asks Why Govt Is Silent On Gaza
Labour is asking the Government why it is silent on Israel's deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, saying New Zealand should be speaking out. 'We haven't heard a peep out of the Government while Israel's blockade causes starvation and their military kills civilians,' Labour associate foreign affairs spokesperson Phil Twyford said. 'Israel has killed more than 52,000 people in its 19-month assault on Gaza, and a two-month aid blockade has caused widespread hunger and a breakdown of law and order, as people become more and more desperate to feed their families. 'New Zealand used to be known as a country of principle, with a strong commitment to international law. But the silence from the Beehive on Israel's relentless assault on Gaza calls that into question. 'New Zealand and our likeminded friends around the world must stand up for the things we value: human rights, justice, and international law. All of these values are being flouted in Gaza by Israel's brutal and vicious war which seems designed to drive Palestinians out of Gaza,' Phil Twyford said.
