Urgency

Mr Speaker—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

I do apologise and I appreciate the barbs across the House. But let me tell you that if I were Shane Jones, I would not be self-styling myself as “Humpty”.

I move, That urgency be accorded the Committee stage and third reading of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill, the Resource Management Reform Bill, the Bail Amendment Bill, the Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill, the Patents Bill, the Financial Markets Conduct Bill, and any bills into which they may be divided; the first reading and referral to a select committee of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3), the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill, the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill, the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill, the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill, the Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill; and the second reading of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill and the Victims of Crime Reform Bill.

All of these bills are currently on the Order Paper, and they are bills that have got a certain amount of time on them. As I have explained many times to the House before, time in the legislative environment is relatively short. The House sits for only 17 hours a week. By the time you take out a general debate and question time, it comes down to around about 13 hours a week, which does not give us a lot of time to consider legislation. From time to time it will be necessary to take urgency to advance things, and as the shadow Leader of the House pointed out last week, there are a number of select committees that could do with having some more work to get their teeth into. So this is an attempt to move the House forward in a very positive way, with bills making progress and work being sent to the select committees.