Can parliamentary urgency and public accountability peacefully coexist?
Late-night bill passed under urgency
After a punishing budget week, the last place most MPs wanted to find themselves in the early hours of Saturday morning was still in the debating chamber. But there they were, locked in a drawn-out battle over accommodation subsidies, reports RNZ's Soumya Bhamidipati. After the Social Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill was called around 11.30pm, opposition MPs filed dozens of amendments in a failed attempt to slow the legislation, which tightens the rules on how boarders are counted when calculating the accommodation supplement.
The bill passed under urgency – an increasingly common tactic for the coalition. The government set a record in its first 100 days for the most bills passed under urgency in the MMP era, a pace that's continued with controversial measures like the pay equity law change earlier this month. That, too, bypassed the select committee process, prompting critics to accuse the government of undermining public accountability in the name of speed.
What is urgency – and why is it so easy to use?
Urgency allows parliament to fast-track legislation, sometimes skipping key stages like select committee scrutiny. While often used for budget-related bills or emergencies, there are few formal checks on its application. A minister (usually leader of the House Chris Bishop) simply moves a motion to commence urgency, and the government's MPs pass the motion with a majority vote.
While urgency is extremely useful for the government, it has plenty of downsides. 'Passing legislation more quickly risks the legal equivalent of the old 'marry in haste, repent at leisure maxim,'' writes The Spinoff's Shanti Mathias. 'The public has less chance to be informed about the law, there is reduced transparency, and legislation might simply be less good – imprecise wording or unintended effects can slip through.'
The most contentious use of urgency is passing a bill into law, but that's not its only application. The Regulatory Standards Bill is an example: because of the budget, the House was still sitting under urgency when it passed its first reading on Friday. The controversial bill, which has attracted more than 22,000 submissions, will now be put before the Finance and Expenditure Committee, where there will be a chance for public feedback.
A committee of the people steps in
In response to the pay equity legislation being pushed through without public input, former National MP Dame Marilyn Waring has convened a 'people's select committee' to gather evidence the government did not. The hastily assembled group of former MPs from across the political spectrum will hear public submissions starting on August 11, RNZ's Russell Palmer reports. Waring said the hearings would be an 'evidence-gathering mission' with a 'really sound report' at the end. 'The government says that it wants to progress pay equity claims, the opposition is saying that it will rescind this and again address the legislation. So we're doing them all a good turn.'
While the initiative lacks any formal powers, groups whose pay equity claims were halted by the new law are being invited to share their experiences. Asked to respond, minister Brooke van Velden said there'd be no changes to the law, but 'members of the public, including former MPs, are welcome to hold their own meetings'.
A broader reckoning on accountability
The controversy is feeding into a wider conversation about how parliament functions. As Politik's Richard Harman writes (paywalled), the select committee on David Seymour's four-year term bill has unexpectedly turned into a mini-referendum on parliamentary accountability. While a number of submitters have used the opportunity to call for a reinstatement of a second chamber of the House, others have taken aim at how select committees themselves operate. Among them was Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who said the current system is encouraging 'sloppy lawmaking' driven by overworked MPs and overloaded agendas.
Regardless of whether the bill passes, the process has surfaced 'widespread disillusionment with the failure of select committees to scrutinise legislation,' Harman observed – a feeling only sharpened by the coalition's aggressive use of urgency over the course of its term so far.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
27 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Submissions for bill criminalising migrant exploitation set to close
Several high-profile cases of migrant exploitation have been uncovered in Auckland in recent years. Photo: RNZ / Blessen Tom Public submissions for a bill that seeks to criminalise migrant exploitation close on Monday. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford introduced the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill on 7 April, proposing several amendments relating to offences, penalties and proceedings, among others. The bill passed its first reading on 24 June and was referred to the Education and Workforce Select Committee. Introducing the bill in Parliament, Stanford outlined 10 amendments the bill sought to make in the Immigration Act 2009, noting its focus on tackling migrant exploitation. "The bill addresses a gap in New Zealand's migrant exploitation settings by creating a new offence, which is to knowingly seek or receive a monetary premium for an offer of employment," Stanford said. "Charging premiums for employment is an increasing form of migrant exploitation and it causes real harm. Often premiums are in the realm of tens of thousands of dollars," she said. "Currently, the legislation does not cover premiums that are paid before the employment commences, premiums that are made offshore, or situations where a premium is sought or received by someone other than the employer," she said. "This change makes it even clearer that this behaviour is not tolerated in New Zealand. It will enable us to prosecute more instances of migrant exploitation and hold exploitative behaviour to account." The bill proposes inserting a new section in the Immigration Act 2009 that creates a new offence. "It will be an offence for an employment-related person to knowingly seek or receive a premium in respect of the employment or potential employment in New Zealand of a victim," the draft bill reads. "New section 351A(1) applies before the victim starts work in New Zealand and whether or not they actually start work in New Zealand." Under the proposed section, a person is defined as a victim if they are domiciled in New Zealand or based overseas and fall within the category of an unlawful worker, a temporary entry class visa holder, a potential temporary entry class visa holder or a potential residence class visa holder. If approved, section 351A would make it an offence to charge premiums for employment, irrespective of whether a worker has started employment. At present, the offence only captures situations in which people are actively working in New Zealand and where the employer is the one charging the premium. The proposed bill widens the scope to include a potential employer, agent or any person involved in the recruitment of a victim. The penalty for the new offence will be imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years, a fine not exceeding $100,000 or both. Arunjeev Singh, general secretary of the New Zealand Forum for Immigration Professionals, criticised some of the bill's content, arguing it gave "unfettered power" to immigration officers and went beyond the relationship of an employer and employee. Other immigration advisors told RNZ they questioned whether such legislation could be enforced in another jurisdiction if passed into law.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
How and why artificial intelligence is being used to process your submissions to politicians
Photo: RNZ Explainer - The public likes to have their say. Tens of thousands of public submissions come in every year to bills before Parliament and to local government entities. With large-scale campaigns and website submission forms, the ability to speak out is easier than ever - but that's causing a problem on the other end of the system, where planners and politicians can struggle to keep up. Artificial intelligence has increasingly been drafted to go over public submissions. Some have applauded the technology's ability to process data quicker than humans, while others fear the human touch may be getting lost in the shuffle. What exactly does AI processing of public submissions mean, how does it work, and are everyone's views getting a fair shake in the process? Here's a breakdown of it all. It's a chance for people to get their voice heard in local and national government. People can make submissions to both their local councils and to Parliament. Submissions can be made to local councils on things like planning and urban development, while the public can make submissions to Parliament select committees on upcoming bills. Submissions have been sky-high in recent months, where the Treaty Principles Bill received more than 300,000 submissions, while the Regulatory Standards Bill which is now before Parliament also has had huge interest. Final submission numbers on that have not been released, but even the early discussion on the proposed bill at the end of last year received about 23,000 submissions. David Wilson, Clerk of the House of Representatives who oversees the business of Parliament's rules and procedures , said public input is at a high. "The Treaty Principles Bill had more submissions than the last two parliaments combined," he said. At one point submission numbers were so large the website suffered technical difficulties . Clerk of the House David Wilson. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith Wilson said the number of submissions does put a strain on resources in Parliament. "If that is the sorts of volumes we're going to see on more and more bills, the days of human beings being able to deal with them in a sort of reasonable time will be past." When submissions come to Parliament, staff of the Office of the Clerk first process them to make sure they are relevant to the bill and not defamatory or insulting before they go on to select committees. Select committees then process and consider feedback before making possible changes to a bill ahead of a final vote on it. "It's great that the public want to engage with Parliament and see the value in making their thoughts known even in such volumes," Wilson said. "I think people understand that no individual MP could read 300,000 submissions. We can't create more time for MPs to read them." Eddie Clark, a senior lecturer in public law at Victoria University of Wellington who is critical of AI use in public submissions, noted that large numbers of submissions have been processed before AI became widely available, such as the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill in 2021 which received more than 100,000 entries. "So it is possible for very large numbers of submissions to be actually read and processed by actual human staff. What was required was time and resource, and in my opinion the denial of both is a reason the huge number of submissions has become such a problem several times over the last couple of years." This is where artificial intelligence is starting to come in - both in local and national government, where it's being used to help process, sort and analyse public input. The Office of the Clerk does not use AI in processing submissions, but it's up to the individual committee overseeing the bill to decide whether to do so when the bills come to their end, Wilson said. For instance, it's been used along the way for the Regulatory Standards Bill. "Committees make their own individual decisions; they don't have any central guidelines around it at the moment." Wilson said the Office of the Clerk is looking at how it might use AI in the future, but is being cautious and "not rushing into it". "I still think ultimately we need to have human decision makers but AI has capacity to do things more quickly than people can - such as flagging submissions that are irrelevant or defamatory. Most submissions are absolutely fine." AI processing has been taken up by local councils, too. Nelson City Council's Nicky McDonald. Photo: RNZ / Tracy Neal In Nelson, the city council worked with local firm the AI Factory to process submissions to their long term plan, Group Manager for Strategy and Communications Nicky McDonald said. "We used the tool to analyse views on issues, including numbers for/against, and to provide us with a summary of views which we then used when writing the first draft of our deliberations report to council. "This report went through multiple iterations as we edited it, but AI was able to give us a starting point which we then developed into a final draft." Xinyu Fu, a senior lecturer in environmental planning at the University of Waikato, organised a pilot project with Hamilton City Council analysing thousands of public submissions on planning proposals. "A lot of them are facing stresses on analysing public submissions," he said of local planners. "Planners spend a lot of time going through those public submissions and those are very laborious work." The Treaty Principles Bill drew heavy public submissions and testimonies to the Justice Select Committee. Photo: Screenshot / NZ Parliament Prompts - instructions, questions and information put into generative AI - are used to direct it. In Hamilton, Fu's research paper explained that "we tasked ChatGPT with extracting five key elements from public feedback: 1) political stance (support, opposition, or unspecified), 2) reasons from submitters, 3) decisions sought by submitters, 4) sentiment of the submission (positive, negative, or neutral), and 5) relevant planning topics." "AI models are sensitive to prompt phrasing so a slight change in prompt may result in changes in its responses," Fu said. With the Regulatory Standards Bill, public feedback on the discussion document last year drew 22,821 submissions. (The feedback to the select committee on the bill itself is still being processed and is confidential until the Finance and Select Committee releases that information.) In a summary of submissions , the Ministry for Regulation said that all submissions on the then-proposed bill were analysed using a Large Language Model (LLM) AI, and it worked with the independent research organisation Public Voice. "All emails and Citizen Space submissions (a digital tool that submits an online form) were assigned a preliminary classification by Public Voice using a LLM that followed a logic model created by the Ministry, analysing it and classifying it as supporting, partially supporting, opposing the bill or unclear on its stance." The majority of submissions on the proposed bill were analysed by AI. However, the summary also said that in a qualitative analysis sample, 939 of those 22,821 submissions were examined by Ministry for Regulation staff to "analyse the themes raised in submissions and feedback on specific policy proposals." That process "involved several staff across the Ministry manually reviewing the sample of submissions (both email and Citizen space submissions) and applying thematic tags." Another 605 submissions were also looked at separately. Submissions made in te reo Māori were translated. "Our approach was carefully designed to reflect all submissions in the final analysis, noting there were many similar points made across most of the submissions," the ministry's deputy chief executive Andrew Royle told Newsroom . Some have concerns about how AI may impact public participation in government. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER "As a rule of thumb, having humans in the loop will be the best practice - humans in charge and AI as a co-pilot," Fu said. "The risk is very high if we completely rely on AI to do the work. To put simply, such biases are generally embedded in our institutions as well as the information humans generated, and these biases are then input into the model to train. Then they become inherent to the model. Because AI systems are black boxes, it is uncertain and unclear about the nature and degree of these biases." Nelson Council's McDonald said they were transparent about how they were using AI. "Every submission form included a statement saying we'd be trialling AI to help speed up submission processing and reduce the resource burden on staff. "We intentionally ensured there was always a (sceptical!) human in the loop sense checking the tool's outputs. Staff (and elected members) read every submission and we had processes to check AI responses." Fu said there are differences in how AI approaches looking at thousands of public submissions. "AI is really good at consistency (if instructed properly) whereas humans are likely to miss things due to fatigue, boredom, or bias towards particular viewpoints (humans are biased too). "AI can do things much faster than humans, and AI's work can be more transparent if designed well because you can ask AI to document its processes and responses for later review and replication. On the downside, humans excel in knowing about the contexts, while AI knows little about the local contexts and backgrounds." "I absolutely think that a regular practice of AI analysis of submissions risks undermining people's confidence in the democratic process and thus the legitimacy of government," Victoria University's Clark said. He said there was a need for more options for people to consult on legislation. He noted in the case of the Regulatory Standards Bill, the pre-legislative consultation was conducted mostly over the holiday period from mid-November to mid-January. This "leads to people seeing the Select Committee stage as their only real chance to comment, incentivising mass submissions expressing simple opposition or support", Clark said. "Giving people a chance to be heard throughout the process, not just at Select Committee, could help deal with the problem. There is a reason the legislative process is generally slow and deliberate, and derailing that good, democratic process has consequences. In my opinion the glut of submissions at the Select Committee stage is one of them." Labour MP Duncan Webb. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith Labour MP Duncan Webb spoke out about the government's use of AI on the Regulatory Standards Bill submissions, writing on social media site BlueSky that it "turns out democracy under this government is real people making submissions and computers reading them". When contacted by RNZ, Webb said he is not opposed to the use of AI, but concerned about how it is used in the democratic process. "New Zealanders who take the time to share their views deserve more than a computer reading their submission. "AI can help with sorting large volumes of submissions, but it can't replace the value of reading someone's views, like the handwritten letter from an 85-year-old or a bundle of colourful drawings from school kids. These submissions often reflect deeply held experiences and emotions, and politicians need to read them." However, Fu said that in local government planning the use of AI in analysis could give staff more time to work with local and underrepresented communities. "Planning has become very reactive," he said. "If we can use AI planners then planners can actually do better work because otherwise they're overwhelmed." A lot of the submissions made on local planning tend to be by developers, Fu said. He said planners could use the time to reach out to communities whose voices aren't heard as often in public submissions, including Māori. When it comes to privacy, public submissions are already just that - public. All submissions sent to select committees become public and are posted on Parliament's website and become part of the permanent parliamentary record - they can only be removed in exceptional circumstances by the Clerk of the House. "They know their submission will become public," Wilson said of submissions. "Our staff are going to read it, officials will read it." "The main privacy concern is about people's contact details - they are always separated from submissions now." Contact information is removed from public submissions before they are posted publicly but Wilson said privacy is one reason to be cautious of the use of AI in analysing them. "We want to make sure we've got a key set of principles and some business rules in place," Wilson said. The government unveiled its first national AI strategy earlier this month mostly aimed at economic growth, "unlocking innovation, productivity, and smarter decision-making across New Zealand" and responsible AI guidance for businesses "to overcome concerns about ethics and complexity." In Nelson, McDonald said they also considered privacy issues. "The submissions, numbering 1505, were redacted of all personal data before they were processed to ensure there were no privacy issues - this is something we would do anyway, before all submissions are uploaded to the Council website for public view." Most agree AI should never be making decisions on policy, however. "What I don't think I can do - and I wouldn't trust it to do anyway - is make judgements," Wilson said. "Nobody's going to predict what's going to happen next month in the AI space because it's evolving so rapidly," Fu said, noting that hyperbole over AI is everywhere at the moment. "We're still in that hype space ... I think we need to start thinking about the responsible use." And for some, there's still a question as to whether the technological advances of AI might be leaving something behind. "In short, democracy takes money and time," Clark said. "Trying to avoid the necessary costs of democratic infrastructure has consequences, and while I understand why the hard-working people in our underfunded and rushed systems might see AI as helpful in these circumstances, in my opinion it will not solve the underlying issue and could unintentionally undermine people's faith in a democracy that cares about their voices." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Otago Daily Times
2 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Fiji's top prosecutor still in self-imposed exile in Chch
By Kaya Selby of RNZ A senior Fijian public official remains in self-imposed exile in Christchurch, despite continuing to receive a six-figure government salary since his reinstatement. Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has called out New Zealander Christopher Pryde, the country's director of public prosecutions, for failing to turn up to work for almost seven months since his reinstatement in January. Rabuka said that since Pryde's reinstatment, he has been nowhere to be found, all the while earning FJ$250,000 (approximately NZ$184,000) per year. Pryde was reinstated following a suspension in April 2023, pending an investigation into "allegations of misbehaviour" by the country's head of state, President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere, under direction of Prime Minister Rabuka. The Otago-educated lawyer has held the Offfice of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) since 2011, during which time he laid charges against former Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and the then-Police Commissioner at the time, Sitiveni Qiliho. After his reinstatement, Pryde suspended the then-acting DPP Laisani Tabuakuro on 29 January over "insolent, grossly discourteous" comments. "I have reviewed, in particular, a number of public statements you have made at various times without authorisation and which have caused reputational damage to the [ODPP] and brought the office into disrepute," Pryde wrote in a letter dated 30 January. "I also note public statements you have made against me personally and the manner in which you have addressed me in email correspondence, all of which I regard as inappropriate and insolent, The last of which led to your suspension." In a statement on 10 April, Pryde said that the removal was undone by now acting DPP Nancy Tikoisuva, who shortly after his resinstatement, filed her own complaints against him. Pryde is now refusing to return to Fiji until the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) - the body that appoints and removes judges - issues a decision on Tikoisuva's complaints. "I am ready to return to work, but I have insisted that the JSC give me a clear undertaking that I will not be immediately suspended and my salary cut upon my return to Fiji. "I spent nearly two years under suspension and seven months without a salary (before his reinstatement) in breach of natural justice." Pryde said that he wrote to Rabuka about his concerns. This week, Rabuka posted on Facebook saying that he had "expressed serious concern" over Pryde's absence. "I will have to find out why he has not been called and whether it is a matter for the Constitutional Offices Commission to consider again."
