It’s always nice to have a work day where you really can’t fail. Rare possibly, but nice. For some of course that’s only a dream, and even the company picnic is a minefield.
Usually, Parliament is the worst case scenario. Being an MP looks like an endless limbo dance, but backwards, blindfolded and across eggshells. I suspect many MPs live by the quote from Prince Humperdinck “I always think everything could be a trap, which is why I’m still alive.” (The Princess Bride)
So it’s a nice change that there is a debate at Parliament where no matter how poorly you might argue, your Bill can't fail.
If there's a debate happening and the big fluffy chair is empty, it's probably a committee stage. Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
It’s called The Committee Stage, and it’s performed by the alter-ego of the House (i.e. all the same MPs but in a different form, which sounds like the blandest kind of magic trick).
Of course, you can still screw it up royally in committee, and end up with a bill that does the opposite of what you intended. It won’t have failed, just morphed into the bizarro version of itself.
Last week there were three of these debates back to back, for a special Parliamentary all no-fail-buffet.
The House spent of all Wednesday Evening disguised as a (very large) committee considering legislation.
Like any good magic trick, the change-over is pretty fast, The House tells itself to become a committee to look through the bills and report back (to itself). The Speaker departs, the Mace gets hidden away and ta-da!
It has to give itself good instructions though because once it’s swapped over it can’t give itself any further instructions without transmogrifying back into the House again.
On this occasion the bills were: one from Shane Jones to create a new independent crown entity that coordinates and encourages infrastructure development; one from Phil Twyford to create a new crown agency to be a public housing landlord and lead housing and urban development projects; and one from Nanaia Mahuta that changes local government rules to help councils coordinate and share services.
The point of this can’t-fail committee stage is not to decide whether a Bill is a reasonable idea, that’s what the first reading stage is for. Nor is it to decide whether to rework it after public feedback. That’s the second reading.
This stage is the final chance to tweak the details before it gets approved or rejected as a whole in the third reading. The idea is to make sure it actually does what the Parliament has already agreed it should do.
Call it quality control.
And to do this the House operates a bit differently. There’s no speaker so one of the three back-up speakers acts as a chairperson. Sitting right alongside them at the front is the Bill’s sponsor, in this case one of those three ministers. They’re there to answer questions, provide feedback and basically help with the editing.
Any MP can suggest edits (amendments) and then all the suggestions to change one section of the bill are debated together and voted on. They call this debating ‘part by part’.
The Committee of the Whole House is the last chance for tinkering with a bill before it goes to its third and final reading. Call it a quality control test. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
There’s no time limit on all of this fiddly arguing. It can be pretty quick or it can also take days.
This is the best chance for opponents of a bill to delay it by debating it endlessly. For example the End of Life Choice Bill has now been in committee for three straight member’s days and will continue for at least one more.
But this is the no-fail debate, so while a bill can get amended significantly, and can take days to get through the quality control test - it can’t fail. That happens at the third reading if, after the quality control stage, everyone agrees that the whole thing was a huge mistake and should be put down humanely at the final hurdle.
That’s pretty rare.
And this week for Shane Jones, Phil Twyford, and Nanaia Mahuta they got to enjoy one of those rare days where you can’t really fail. At least not without some real concentrated effort.
