Over the past few years, the word “urgency” has come up a few times in the news. The word invokes a sense of adrenaline, and it’s come up so often that you’d be forgiven for thinking New Zealand Parliament runs under a constant state of panic at a rate of 150 beats per minute.
Unfortunately, urgency in New Zealand Parliament only makes business in the debating chamber go on for longer than it already does. And trust me, it already goes on for longer than it should. Not only that, but it means parliament can sit on extra days. But urgency doesn’t just mean more good TV. More time is spent debating the bill, but less time is spent in between stages, and one of the most important stages is skipped completely.
To understand the weight of urgency in New Zealand Parliament, we first need a vague understanding of how bills are introduced. Under normal circumstances, a few sitting days have to go by after a bill introduced before it undergoes its first reading.
The first reading can be better understood as the first debate of a bill. The time between its introduction and its debate can be used by MPs to think about the bill, prepare arguments, and come up with some quips to hopefully, maybe, potentially invoke a chuckle in the chamber (the peak of one’s political career). At the end of the first reading, the house votes on whether or not to progress the bill further.
Here’s where urgency starts to be something you should care about: normally, a bill will go through the select committee between its first and second reading. The select committee has six months to consider the bill, which typically involves submissions from the public. Anyone in New Zealand can make a submission for or against the bill, and make recommendations. The select committee would then take the public submissions and evidence into consideration. When a bill is introduced under urgency, it gets to go through its first, second, and third readings all in one sitting, foregoing the select committee process.
It sounds pretty shit, but we don’t always need to rage against the machine. Quite often, bills passed under urgency are to fix mistakes in legislation previously passed. After a budget is announced, urgency is often used to enact a change in taxes on goods to prevent people from taking an unfair advantage. Parliament’s urgency rules also allow emergency legislation to be passed if needed.
So yes, urgency does exist for a good reason. That being said, many are becoming concerned about the rise in bills being passed under urgency for debatably valid reasons. While the government needs to provide a reason for a bill being introduced under urgency, there’s no criteria as to what this reasoning must be – pretty much anything better than “because we feel like it” is good enough.
The current government in particular has been heavily criticised for its use of urgency. Most famously, the Pay Equity Amendment Bill was passed under urgency in May 2025, prompting public outrage. Passing such controversial bills without feedback from the public dangerously toes the line of avoiding pushback until after the bill becomes law.
One of the beautiful things about New Zealand’s legislative system is how involved the public can be. Sometimes, the system isn’t perfect, and it is necessary to skip stages of the process. But our voices are important, and whether or not we can have our say in what’s being debated in parliament, that doesn’t stop us from speaking out.
