For a while now I have been exercised by a matter of some urgency. A great deal of urgency, in fact. Let me explain.
For those unfamiliar with it, "urgency" is the term given to the procedures within Parliament whereby the government of the day can either bypass the approved legislative steps and/or extend the sitting time in the House to pass law more rapidly than usual.
And there is good evidence that under this Government a great deal of it is going on - thus potentially preventing its legislative programme from enjoying the non-partisan scrutiny of both the general public and expert submitters.
This has serious constitutional implications and the potential to bring our parliamentary democracy into disrepute. Arguably, it leaves the country open to the hurried manufacture of flawed law - law that might fail to achieve what it has been designed to achieve; law which, in at least some cases, will be hard and expensive to undo; law which may be undone at some point down the track because the manner of its passage has been seen to be overtly ideological and, arguably, has been forced through the legislative process, bypassing the tried and tested checks and balances. Law, in short, that threatens to undermine public confidence in our democracy.
There are different kinds of urgency, including the rare "extraordinary urgency", whereby law is made quickly to respond to a national emergency or an event of a similar nature. This is relatively uncontroversial. Then there is urgency that is applied to different steps in the legislative process, including, for instance, extending sitting time to debate a particular "reading" of a Bill.
But it may also be deployed across the entire legislative process, contracting the time during which the ramifications of a Bill can be considered; or, in the most concerning of cases, doing away with the select committee stage altogether.
It is often said that the select committees are the real engine rooms of our democracy; that the debates and crossfire in the House are its "show time". It is at the select committee stage of legislation that public submissions and expert "evidence" are heard and the potential flaws and omissions of a Bill ironed out by a committee of MPs drawn from across the House. Because in New Zealand we have a "unicameral" parliamentary system - there is no upper house or senate through the filters of which legislation must pass - the select committee stage assumes even greater importance than it might in comparable democracies.
Which is why we should be concerned when urgency that bypasses select committees becomes almost a routine occurrence.
On Monday night in Wellington, a Victoria University and Law Foundation research initiative, the Urgency Project, was due to deliver a presentation on its findings. In an interim report the project's researchers revealed the data it had gathered showed two recent Parliaments in particular were prone to a "significant increase" in urgency, which "has resulted in legislation not being accorded select committee scrutiny". They were the 45th Parliament of 1996-1999 - under a National-led government - and the current one.
Figures from the Parliamentary Library indicate under Labour between 1999 and 2008, four Bills in each parliamentary term were not referred to select committee under urgency. The same source shows as of December 16, 2010 - just two-thirds of the way through its term - Prime Minister John Key's National-led Government has resorted to this strategy 19 times. That is to say, 19 Bills were pushed through without the usual consideration.
As the Urgency Project points out, there are often good reasons why urgency is invoked: primarily, for example, to increase the working hours of Parliament and progress non-controversial elements of its legislative programme. Few people can have arguments with this, given that the project has also revealed New Zealand's MPs spend less time in the House than their counterparts in Britain and Australia, for instance.
But there are other more partisan and political reasons, too - including being seen to act decisively as a government. In the case of this Government, however, the suspicion must fall that urgency sometimes goes beyond hard-working zeal and into less honourable terrain: namely, avoiding the detailed scrutiny of hasty legislation which could be said to play to particular political constituencies.
An elected government of course has every right, even duty, to press and push for the legislative programme on which it was elected. But when a Government has in just two years avoided select committees more times than in the previous nine years put together, it has to be said a trend is at work. It is not one that sits well with democrats, including some of the Government's own supporters.
National-leaning blogger David Farrar and Labour MP Grant Robertson recently teamed up to express their concern over the issue.
Well they might. Invoked too often the tactic begins to border on contempt for the legislature, for the public and for the standards of accountability to which we expect our politicians and lawmakers to be held.
- Simon Cunliffe is deputy editor (news) at the Otago Daily Times.
