Parliament Bill

Members, we now come to our final debate, clauses 1 and 2, “Title” and “Commencement”.

Don’t worry, this won’t take long. Just two things. Firstly, the Act, when it’s an Act, will be the Parliament Act 2025, not 2024. Just wondering why he didn’t tidy that up with the Amendment Papers, or is it just one of the things the Clerks do? It’s not a big thing.

The real substantive point I was going to ask about is clause 2(2)(c), which is for the application of Part 9, which “comes into force—(i) on a date or dates set by Order in Council;”. This is the citizens initiated referenda part. For the life of me—it always seems odd to me to have an Order in Council, not only because it’s just another job to do but also because it gives a degree of vagueness. Given that it’s a citizens initiated referenda, it would have seemed wise to simply have a hard line. Now, I can understand that you want to make sure that the Electoral Commission has got a system in place, but I would have thought that 30 June 2026 might have done it, or even if it was 1 January 2027. But is there any reason why you thought an Order in Council was needed there rather than just setting a hard date?

Well, the member the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, I think, knows that bills have dates in them as they go through the process, but they get updated to the Royal assent. When it gets eventually to the Governor-General, it will say “Parliament Bill 2025”, and it will eventually become the Parliament Act 2025.

Part 9, as the member rightly notes—he’s quick on the uptake—is in relation to the citizens initiated referenda, and it will be because of the variety of things that need to happen between the Clerk and the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is obviously getting ready for an election next year, so there will be a range of other things going on as well, and I think a huge amount turns on that. That’ll be the reason.

Clause 1 agreed to.

The question is, That the Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 362 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

I move Amendment Paper 361 dividing the bill.

Motion agreed to.

The committee divided the bill into the Parliament Bill and the Parliament (Repeals and Amendments) Bill, as set out on Amendment Paper 361.