How Laws are Made: WebinarPresenter: Troy MurphyPanellists: Suze Jones, Deputy Clerk of the House of Representatives; David Bagnall, Principal Clerk of Procedure; & Gabor Hellyer, Principal Clerk of Committee

Troy Tēnā koutou katoa. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us from your bubbles across New Zealand for today's webinar on how laws are made. I'm Troy Murphy. I'm one of the education advisors here at Parliament. I must say I'm not an expert on how laws are made in New Zealand. But thankfully for us today, we've got three experts here to guide you through the different steps.So we're very honoured to have Deputy Clerk of the House of Representatives, Suze Jones; principal clerk of procedure, David Bagnall; and principal clerk of committee Gabor Hellyer to talk about how laws are made today.Now, before I hand over to our experts, there are just a couple of housekeeping things that I need to cover. Now, we just want to make sure that in today's webinar we're pitching our content at the right level, so we're just going to be running a quick poll to see how you viewers out there rate your knowledge of Parliament and the lawmaking process. Now, the poll is going to be out of five—so five being if you're an expert; if you're like, "Hey, Troy, where was my invite for the panel? I should be there with you presenting this webinar." One is if you're a beginner—you're like, "I saw this on my social media. I thought this was quite interesting. I thought I'd partake." And three if you're like, "I know the broad strokes of the lawmaking process, but maybe not some of the nitty-gritty detail that we'll be covering in our webinar today." So I'm just going to launch that poll, and feel free to tick which box applies to you. And then I'll even publish those results there so everyone can see. Wow! You guys are quick—hose are firing in pretty fast there. I should have said as well: this is an anonymous poll, by the way. We're not going to be tracking your name against your number or anything like that. We'll only really have the results. So don't feel shy. Cool. So we got a fair few there.It looks like we've got a pretty mixed bag. So I might actually just publish those results with all of you, just so you can see what we're working with here. Yeah. So we've got a few experts—five experts. So there's a couple of additional panellist members out there somewhere. Thank you for that. That's really going to help us with how we pitch our content today. Another thing that I just need to cover with the housekeeping side of things: this webinar today, we don't want it to be like a lecture series. We really want to be like a conversation with you members of the public out there. So if you do have a question for our panellist members—maybe you find something that they're talking about quite interesting, and you want to know more about it, or maybe you want some clarity on a certain thing—feel free to just chuck any questions or comments that you have in the

chat. So if you just go down the bottom of your screen there, there should be an icon that says “Chat”. If you click on that, it should open up a box towards the right hand side of your screen. And if you go down the bottom there, there'll be a textbox. So that's where you can enter in your questions.Now, we'll just do a little bit of a disclaimer there. Just above that textbox, you will notice who your question or your comment will go to. There's a dropbox there. So if you're a bit on the shy side, and you don't want other people to necessarily see your question or anything like that, you can just send the question to us panellists. Or if you're loud and proud and you want everyone to know what your question is, you can send it to all audience members. So, yeah; that's the general housekeeping side of things out of the way.I'm just going to give you a bit of a look at our menu for our talk today. So we're going to be focusing our discussion today from when the bill gets introduced to the House of Representatives. And there is a little bit of a process before these stages, and Suze will briefly touch on this when she lays down the foundations of our discussion today. But if we just quickly look at our menu, you'll see that our sort of entrée, or our first course, is going to be the introduction. And then we're going to be working our way down this list here until we get to our dessert, our final step there, the Royal assent.I'm just going to hand over to Suze now. Like I say, if you've got any questions, feel free to pop those into the chat. Keen to get some dialogue going. That's my sole purpose for being here. So don't make me irrelevant. I'm keen to do some talking as well. I'll hand you over to Suze. Thank you, Suze.Suze Cool. Kia ora koutou. I am Suze Jones, the Deputy Clerk of the House of Representatives, and in the middle little picture there you can see there's the Speaker's seat at the top. Below that, there's a green chair, and that's where I sit some of the time, wearing a black robe and acting as a Clerk at the Table. So before we kick into how a law gets made, I'll just briefly go through some context, and starting with the most important question, perhaps: what is Parliament? Well, in New Zealand, it's made up of the Sovereign, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and the House of Representatives. So together they make Parliament. So the House is where our MPs are elected to sit. And today in the presentation, we will be using the words “House” and “Parliament” pretty much interchangeably, because that is how they can be used in nearly all circumstances. The Sovereign's role is also important, though, and it's one that we'll go back to at the very end today when we talk about the Royal assent—the clue is in the name there, I guess.So our constitutional arrangements are based on the British Westminster style of government. So we are a constitutional monarchy, meaning that the Sovereign is the head of State. And there are three branches of that State. There's the legislature, known as Parliament; the executive, which is also known as the Government, including Ministers in Cabinet, and

depicted there by the Beehive, where the Ministers live; and the judiciary, which is also known as judges or the court.So a key feature of our constitutional arrangements is that power doesn't reside in any one branch of the State. Power is spread across the three branches, and that's known as the separation of powers. Each branch of State acts as a check and a balance on the other branches. Of course, one of the key roles of the Parliament is to scrutinise the Government—-say, through question time and select committee inquiries. But in terms of lawmaking, each of the three branches makes the law.So Parliament makes Acts of Parliament, or statutes, which in New Zealand are the highest form of legislation. And many of these tell the executive what to do. The executive also makes a lot of laws that directly affect people, what we call regulations or secondary legislation. But it can only make laws where Parliament has first passed a law saying that it can do that. Judges make the law in the decisions they make. They can often be used to work out how the law applies in particular situations.And there are a number of other ways that the branches provide a check and balance to each other's lawmaking. Parliament keeps an eye on how the executive uses the lawmaking authority that Parliament has given it. And, ultimately, the House can disallow Government regulations—that is, it can decide that a regulation or a rule that the Government has made is not OK and it shouldn't stay in place. Most parliamentary business is initiated by the Government, particularly bills or proposals, and a court can decide that a regulation exceeds the authority that the executive has to make it or that the regulation was made in the wrong way. A court can declare that an Act of Parliament is inconsistent with the rights and freedoms set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This has happened once, quite recently, in relation to an Act that prevents some prisoners from voting in elections. And, to complete that circle, Parliament can override judge-made law. The most famous example in recent times was Parliament passing the Foreshore and Seabed Act because it disagreed with a court judgment over ownership of that area of land.So in New Zealand, Parliament is the supreme lawmaker. And one of the main reasons we have a Parliament is so that laws can be made and changed, and that affects all of us. Laws govern almost every single aspect of our lives: what we can and can't do and how we should or shouldn't do it. The Parliament gets its mandate to make those rules for society from the electorate—all the voters, all of us who decide who their representative should be to vote and decide on all the new proposed policies and laws.Since 1947, New Zealand has had the power to make all sorts of laws. Before this, the UK Parliament still needed to legislate for New Zealand to change its constitution. And our Constitution Act declared in 1986 that Parliament has full power to make laws.Parliament actually spends about half its time debating and making laws, and, on average, there's about 86 Acts of Parliament per year.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about why laws get made, and mostly about how the laws get made. So, most often, the Government or a Minister in the Government has an idea or a policy, or maybe an event happened like the Canterbury earthquakes or a pandemic and the Government needs to change how many trucks are allowed to drive down your street with rubble all day and night or maybe change the way benefits or tax is paid for. Many times the Government can just make a decision about things like that and a new regulation or rule is made, but sometimes a new law is needed. And sometimes the laws just need updating, like if a law refers to a department that doesn't exist anymore, like the Ministry of Works, or the Government signs a new international treaty and we have to update our laws to match another group of countries that we said we would. Parliament's really effective when all of these happen.So the House's rules help laws get made. For example, they set time limits on debates about laws and bills. But the House's rules also make it harder for the majority, the Government, to rush legislation through. Debates, or votes, at least, always have to be held on new proposed laws, even in sped up processes like urgency, where more than one stage of a proposed law gets done on one day. But lawmaking doesn't start in the Chamber, where you might think it does. From an idea, officials work with experts and the public to come up with a proposed law, a bill. And there's a team of expert drafters who write these proposed laws. A Government bill needs to go through a complex process of developing policy and getting approval from Cabinet to proceed. That can take years, and it can take a few days in really exceptional circumstances. So once the Minister has this proposed idea, this new law, the bill, he or she introduces it to Parliament and a draft of the bill is put on the legislation website and hard copies are made available to members of Parliament. Ministers also make things called departmental disclosure statements and regulatory impact statements available when their bills are introduced. Those lay out various issues and impacts that the proposed laws may have so that members of Parliament can discuss them when they debate the bill in Parliament or you, the public, can comment on them when you submit to a select committee. But what about those laws that don't come from the Government? The most famous of these are members' bills—for example, the law legalising gay marriage and, most recently, the End of Life Choice Bill, about euthanasia, that went through Parliament. Once those bills are passed, they're part of the New Zealand statute book, just like laws that start out with Government Ministers, and they have the same status as law. The process of getting the members' bills introduced is much more fun, though. A ballot is held when there's a space for a first reading on the Order Paper, which is the agenda of Parliament, which says which business Ministers and members look at every day. So this ballot happens quite irregularly, but it is several times a year, and all members who aren't Ministers can pop a proposed law, a bill, into the members'

bill ballot. Every bill is given a housie token, and that token goes into the biscuit tin. And a special guest, who's usually a non-political staff member, draws the bill or the bills out of the tin. The tin itself came from DEKA, which was a department store, a bit like Farmers, for those youngsters in the audience, in the 1990s. And the tin's still going strong. Even the sellotape on the tin is the original sellotape. The tokens are just ordinary housie tokens, and the lucky bills are then—once they've come out and their housie token's been pulled—introduced to Parliament. They also go on the legislation website, and hard copies are also made available to members of Parliament: they get picked up from the aptly named Bills Office. There's a video about the members' bill ballot on the Parliament website.Now, there are also proposed laws that affect just some private trusts, like a charity or a company, and they really mostly are amending bills or bills that change Acts or laws that are already in existence. They date from the time where, if you wanted to set up a charity, you needed an Act of Parliament to do so. So now, when those charities want to change who's on their governing board, for example, they need a new Act of Parliament via a private bill. And then there are bills that just affect local areas, like the management of mangroves in the Thames-Coromandel area. Those are called local bills, and they can be introduced by any member of Parliament. But usually the local MP will introduce them. So whether the bills are from Ministers or members, they get called out in Parliament by the Clerk of the House at the beginning of each sitting day. You may have also heard of something called a private member's bill. We haven't actually had that category of bills since1996, I think. In New Zealand, we just have members' bills and private bills, not private members' bills. But they do still exist in the UK; so I think maybe that's a bit confusing for people.Does anyone have any questions so far?Troy Yeah. We've got a couple of questions here. So one is about whether this session will be recorded and publicly available post webinar. And the answer to that is yes. It will be available as video on demand. And another question that we've got here is: did the Government have to pass any laws for its response to COVID-19?Suze It did indeed. In fact, it passed three laws on 25 March. That was the last day the House sat before it rose. Two related to things specifically about COVID-19, and the third one, a tax bill also about COVID-19, allowed the Government to spend up to $50 billion on COVID-19 related responses. And you'll have seen the Government announcing exactly how they're going to spend that money on the press conferences that have been happening since then.Troy Cool. If you've got any other questions, everyone, just fire them away. Someone's asking: can we watch videos during the webinar? Yes, we are going to be watching a clip, actually, in our webinar session today on select committees. So, yeah, we will be watching that all together.

Someone's asked the question: do members' bills have regulatory impact statements completed?Suze They don't, because they're not drafted and they don't have officials until they get their first reading and then they go to select committee. And that's when the officials are able to answer questions about what kind of regulatory impacts the bills might have. But all Government bills are required to have them.Troy Another question here. I get that New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy. Is it also a representative democracy?Suze It is indeed. So instead of voting via referendum—for example, states or countries like Switzerland and California, where members can go in and directly vote on every single Act or bill or policy that comes up—we elect our representatives, our MPs, and they vote on those things for us.Troy Cool. Another question here. Is applying new laws that change the structure of Parliament any different to apply, like decreasing the number of votes needed for a party to get in?Suze Yeah, so that's a really good example. So there are several clauses or provisions in the Electoral Act and some of those are what we call entrenched. And that means instead of just a clear majority in the House, which is how nearly all laws pass, it's actually needed to have a 75 percent majority. So that means more than just the Government have to agree to it. And that's the case for many things that are what we call constitutional issues or issues that could really end up favouring one party over another.Troy Another question here. Is there a law that had to be amended to allow the Government to spend that money? Is that a tax law—an actual tax law?Suze The one I'm thinking about was an imprest supply bill. So that's a bill that allows the Government to spend money before the Budget. So normally there's Budget legislation and then there's also these things called imprest supply bills, which allows the Government to spend money before the Budget bill happens.Troy Cool. Another question here. We’ll maybe just do a couple more, just so we can start partaking in some of the other courses we've got. Don't worry; we'll have a bit of a question dump at the end of our session where we'll try and tackle as many questions that are left hanging as possible. This one is cool. This is the cool one, actually. If one party has a majority in the House, what stops it from passing any laws it wants to?Suze Well, that's a good question.David I can talk a bit about that later on.Suze Yeah, that might be a good idea, David. Cool. Yeah, we can move on. Yep.Troy All right; cool. So let's move on to our next course here.

Suze People can just ask questions the whole time through, and we will get to them. So once the bills have sat on the Order Paper for a few days, no matter what kind of bill they are, they can have their first reading, which is a debate in Parliament, followed by a vote on whether the bill should progress any further.Now, the Government decides when their bills come up for first reading, but members' bills and private and local bills come up on special Wednesdays that are set aside as members' days. And that's usually every second Wednesday when Parliament sits. That's about 15 days a year, and that's compared to about 75, or I think 77, days a year that the Government can decide which of its bills get passed.Now, when the first reading debate starts, the Minister or the member in charge of the bill, the one who's introduced the bill to Parliament, suggests a really specific question to Parliament in quite archaic language. The Minister will stand up and say, "I move, that the ABC bill be now read a first time." And then they have to say which select committee they want the bill to be considered by. So, "I nominate the XYZ committee to consider the bill." Now, those words have to be said exactly like that, and, if they're not, the Speaker, he or she, the Speaker in the Chair, will stand up and say, "Hang on. Can the honourable member please just go back and say the exact words that they need to say." And he or she will give the words to the Minister or the Clerk at the Table will take the words over to the Minister. It's really important that those exact words are said. So then, at the end of the debate, all of the MPs know exactly what they're voting on.So that debate takes just over an hour for members', private, and local bills and usually about an hour and a half, but up to a maximum of two hours, for Government bills' first readings. So each member chosen to speak by the Speaker has a 10-minute slot or a 5-minute slot to say what they think of the ideas in the bill and to persuade other people to either vote for it or not vote for it.The first reading's then voted on, and, if the vote is agreed, the Clerk stands up and reads out the name of the bill and says, "First reading". Now, according to legend or history, clerks of the Westminster Parliament, the original one in the UK, used to read out the entire text of the bills to members of Parliament. Its clerks could always read and write in those times, and members of Parliament sometimes couldn't. But now only the name of the bill is read out, which we're really grateful for because some bills are like 600 or 700 pages. But it's still a really important public statement that Parliament wants the bill to proceed. So we still stand up and say it.Now, if the bill does get a first reading, the Speaker will then ask the Parliament if they want it to go to the select committee that the Minister or member mentioned in their speech. And he'll say something like, "The question is that the bill be considered by the XYZ Committee." And that's not the name of a real committee! The names of the committees will be shown to you by Gabor a bit later on. But then, if the members vote and

agree, the XYZ committee will get to hear from the ministerial officials and the members of the public about the bill.Troy Cool. We've got a few more questions that have come in here. Let's have a look here. So there's a question about elections here. Yeah, I suppose we haven't really got a course where we cover that.Suze We might be able to do one with the Electoral Commission.Troy Yeah, definitely. It could be a topic for a webinar, actually. Someone's asked: do conscience votes apply in all legislation?Suze No; they don't. And there's one person who decides whether a conscience vote will apply, and that is the Speaker—the actual Speaker, the Hon Trevor Mallard at the moment. But there is a precedent for what kinds of bills do have conscience votes for them, and they are bills about things like alcohol, gambling, abortion, and euthanasia. So they're things that people often have quite profound value or religious views about. So that tends to be what they are. But even in those bills, a lot of votes weren't conscience votes, because they were things called procedural issues, like whether the debate should stop or carry on. So not every topic always has conscience votes for every bit of the bill.Troy Cool. So hot off the press, everyone, I have got word that there is an elections webinar coming.David Can I just add: most votes are done through what we call party votes. It's probably an entirely different webinar about the House processes. But even during a party vote, members do have an ability to ask their whips to cast their votes in a specific way that is different from the rest of their party. It doesn't happen very often, and, if that happens, then we need to get a list of who's cast their votes in which direction. But mostly those votes are party votes just sort of along party lines. As a sense of the numbers, during the term of a Parliament, we might expect to do twelve or thirteen hundred party votes but maybe like four dozen personal votes. That can vary, of course, as it has during this Parliament.Troy Someone's asked the question: are Governments able to put laws on international bodies like the internet and fast food chains?Suze The laws of New Zealand apply to New Zealand, and I think that's probably a question more for Parliamentary Counsel Office, on how they do that. I don't know; have you got any ideas there, David?David Well, I'd suggest, as you say, to the extent that those—it's a legal question; I'm not a lawyer. But I guess it would really apply to activities that fall within the jurisdiction of New Zealand.Troy Someone's asked: what are whips?Suze So whips—or the Green Party have a musterer, which sounds a wee bit nicer, I guess. There's one for every party, and they, basically, make sure that members are in the House when they're supposed to be—so if they're a spokesperson for a certain topic, they're in the House for that to give their speech. And the whips often give the vote. So in New Zealand, as David said, we nearly always have party voting. So all the members of the party will tell their whip how they want to vote—or maybe the whip tells them how

they're going to vote. And the whip will stand up and say how many votes will be cast for National or Labour or New Zealand First, for example.Troy Someone wants to know: what is the percentage of votes required to allow the bill to pass its first reading?Suze So 61 votes will be needed for the bill to pass, because there are 120 members in the House.Troy So just over half.Suze It's a clear majority for nearly all bills.Troy Cool. We'll have this question to finish it off. Someone's asked: where can they get alerts about all these webinars that are coming along? If you're not following the Parliament Facebook page, the social media channels and things like that, we really encourage you to do so, because that's where a lot of our marketing is going through. We're also doing newsletters and things like that as well. So just keep your eyes peeled if you're keen on the rest of the webinars in this series. Yeah. And someone said don't forget Instagram. Yeah, definitely. Cool. Thank you for that—those two courses there, Suze.I believe we're going to be passing over to Gabor now to talk about select committees, which is our next course here.Gabor Kia ora koutou katoa. Thanks for joining us today. And, just before I get going, I just wanted to say: awesome questions coming through. Keep them coming, and we will do our best to get to all of them. So I'm going to start off just by showing a short video about select committees—what they are and, in very general terms, what they do. We'll then go through and look at the process that they follow for considering a bill and we'll unpack some of the specifics. So if we can play the video.[Video plays] When Parliament meets, they make decisions that affect you and all of New Zealand. Having an in-depth conversation with a group of people can be difficult. But what about with 120 people? Impossible. That's where select committees come in.Select committees are a small group of MPs from different parties who work together to look at issues in detail. There are a number of committees, each focusing on different areas that affect you, like health, education, and ngā take Māori. Petitions, proposed new laws, and changes to old ones are just a few of the things committees look at. So they can make informed decisions, committees often ask for your thoughts by calling for submissions. Submitting gives you a chance to have your say and helps MPs understand how a law change could affect you and other New Zealanders. They're interested in opinions and ideas from anyone. You can make a submission electronically on our website or the old fashioned way. You might also speak to the committee in person. Your submissions help inform what they report back to Parliament. Democracy works best when everyone has a voice.If you want to find out more about select committees or have a look at what's open for submissions, check out our website, parliament.nz.

Gabor Awesome. Thank you, Troy. Hopefully, you managed to get most of the messages in there. So just to just to kick off this section, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the select committee stage generally. And I think the first thing I just wanted to mention is that it's a really crucial step in the New Zealand legislative process. New Zealand only has what we call one House of Parliament, which means that there's only one group of members—that's the House of Representatives. In some other countries, they might have two Houses of Parliament. So, for example, in the UK they've also got the House of Lords. When you've got two different Houses of Parliament, they share the workload. Whereas, in New Zealand, because we only have one, select committees do a lot of the really detailed examination of proposed changes to laws. They also provide a really important forum for members of the public to have their say. And that's you guys. So that's another really crucial part of the process. And, I guess, in terms of how they do their work, they'll consider the views and then they'll report their recommendations back to the House. And the last point up there on the screen that I just wanted to mention at the beginning is the idea that by having a process where you can scrutinise the proposed changes and you can get the differing views in society and amongst members of Parliament out there, you end up with better laws at the end of the day. So that's the kind of presumption that we that we go forward with. So I guess it's just a little plug that we actually want there to be politics, we want there to be differing views, because by testing the ideas, you end up with better outcomes in the end.Troy I've got a question here, Gabor. So someone wants to know: how do they decide who's on different select committees?Gabor That is a brilliant question because it's what my next slide is going to be about. So on here, what we've got is we've just got a list of subject select committees. So in New Zealand, we have subject select committees, and we've got 12 of those. As you can see, they cover a wide range of different subject areas. We also have five specialist committees of Parliament. But that's a topic for a different webinar. They don't generally look at law changes. So this is where bills would generally go. So I work with the Justice Committee, and we have people working with all of those committees here at Parliament.So moving on to the next slide, before I get into the process that select committees follow when they're looking at a proposed law change, I'll just talk a little bit about that question that we had of who's actually sitting on committees and how's that decided.So this is kind of a fun fact I do like to share with people: when you think about your vote in an election, most often what people think about is choosing the next Government that's going to govern New Zealand, and that is the primary purpose. But it also flows all the way through to who sits on select committees, because your vote is counted with everybody else's and then they allocate the seats in Parliament, which you can see there on the right hand of your screen. But, a fun fact, in select

committees, the overall seats across all of the committees have to reflect the same proportionality of the seats as the full membership of the House, which is determined by the voters at the elections. So if you get more votes, you get more seats.So committees are generally groups of 6 to 12 members. And we had that question about how's that actually chosen, who sits on which committee. In essence, each party is told, "OK, you have X number of seats. You can choose which of your members you put on which committee." So parties get to choose where they allocate their members. Although, members can sub in and out as well, so if they're particularly interested in a particular law change or somebody can't make it to a meeting, you can swap members out temporarily.One other point that I just want to emphasise at the beginning in terms of how committees work is this idea that tied votes are lost. The reason that's important is because generally you will have two different kinds of committees. You might have a committee where you've got four people from one political perspective and four from another—so let's say four Labour, four National. On a committee like that, if there's a question that comes up and they have to vote on it, a tied vote is lost. And what that means is that they have to work together to reach a consensus on how to move forward on those issues.Some committees do have a majority from members who belong to parties that are in Government, and those committees tend to have a slightly different dynamic on them. So it is something worth paying attention to if you're looking at a particular committee.And last point there: people have often heard of the Speaker of the House; well, committees have a kind of equivalent that's called the chairperson, and they have an important role in terms of managing the way that the select committee does its business and making sure that the rules are followed, and all those sorts of things.Troy We've got a flurry of questions here, Gabor. You're a popular man.Gabor Select Committees are super interesting.Troy They are. They are indeed. The engine room of Parliament, we like to refer to select committees as. So someone's asked: how can members of the public get to attend and participate in a select committee?Gabor Also a fantastic question. That is going to be covered in a couple of slides’ time. So I might pause that one if that's okay.Troy Cool. What else have we got here? How much consideration and value is actually placed on submissions by members of the public as opposed to expert testimonials or reporting?Gabor Yeah, that's a really good question too. I am an eternal optimist, and I think that there is a lot of value placed on those perspectives. I am going to talk a little bit about the submissions process later on. But it's a really important stream of information coming from the members of the public through to politicians to help them understand what people think about things, and this is a point that I can emphasise at many points during this discussion. But sometimes you might make a

submission, you might put forward your view, and, down the track, the change that you wanted to see made isn't necessarily made. And sometimes people might think, “Well, what was the point of me getting involved if the change didn't happen?” But it's part of a really big conversation a lot of the time, and I think there's a lot of value in members of Parliament getting to hear the different perspectives in society. And, you never know, sometimes things take a couple of rounds to percolate through, but sometimes you might end up influencing what people think about a topic anyway. So I think members do place a lot of emphasis on it, and we'll talk a little bit more in the coming slides about how to have a really good chance of members hearing what you say as well—about how to make a really effective submission.Troy Cool. We've got a really good question here about the composition, which is the slide that we are on. So I think it's good to field this one now. It says: so the proportion of MPs for a party are represented in equal portion across all committees, but not necessarily within committees. For example, some select committees might have no representatives from some parties.Gabor Yeah, so, I mean, that's very much true. So, for example, when you have smaller parties, they are proportionately allocated fewer seats across the committees. So, for example, the Green Party has eight members of Parliament, which means that they might not necessarily have a member on every single committee. And then, on top of that, you've got maybe Labour and National that have a lot of seats to allocate across committees. But, in essence, they get to decide where they put their members. So if they decide that they've got a lot of members that particularly are interested in one topic, they might put more of their members on that committee. And so that can affect whether a committee has a majority on one side or what sort of representation you have from each party.David It's worth mentioning that all members have access to all committee papers across committees. So even if they're not on a particular select committee, they can still view or access the papers before another committee. And members can participate—well, no; they can all turn up. They can all come and watch. And if the other members agree, then they can participate as well, even if they're not members. So there is some flexibility there for members to participate according to their interest. And, of course, they also get substituted one for another as well. And sometimes a member of a small party might replace a member of a larger party for a particular purpose, and that sometimes happens as well.Troy Cool. Someone's asked: is 12 the absolute maximum for a committee?Gabor Nope, it's not an absolute maximum. You can have as many members as you like on a committee. And I believe we have had some examples of 13 members on a committee. I'm not entirely sure we've got one at the moment, but certainly you can have more than 12.

Troy Someone's asked: if you've got a majority on a committee, does that mean you can, effectively, do what you want? You know, we've got a few more courses to come. So, you know, a second reading, third reading, after the select committee process. So even if a committee does have a majority, there are some other hurdles that the bill or the proposed law still needs to go through to be made into a law.David A quick answer to that is it depends what they want.Gabor That's a good point. And the other thing I'd say is select committees do have to follow the rules that are set out by the House of Representatives. So they're not completely free to just decide to do whatever they like; there are certain rules that they do have to follow. And, also, we're actually really lucky in New Zealand because we have a lot of really strong conventions here about the way that things should be done.And generally in select committees, even if one side has a majority, it's very rare to see that kind of dynamic where they just decide to do whatever they like, because there are accepted ideas about the ways that things should be done and the correct process to follow, and that is really respected a lot of the time. And I think, as a country, we're really lucky to have a Parliament where things work like that. So we might crack on to some other slides, and we can come back to some of those other questions later. So this is just a broad overview of the process that committees follow. I'm just going to talk through these really briefly, but we're going to unpack a couple of these things as we go through. So first of all, when a committee gets a bill, there's a couple of process decisions they have to make at the start, including calling for submissions from the public and appointing advisors. They'll then receive an initial briefing from their advisers that sort of gives them an outline of the issues that they're going to be looking at. They'll generally hear submissions, which includes what we call oral submissions, which is people coming to speak to the committee in person or maybe over video conference, as we're doing here. They'll then get some advice from their advisers on the submissions and they'll consider the issues raised in the submissions. And that's discussion time up there. That's really one of the crunch parts of the process. And that then flows through into amendments. Amendments are proposed changes to the bill. And they will actually write out their exact changes in wording, and then they'll report their recommendations to the House.So that's the kind of broad overview, and we'll unpack a couple of those things now.So hearings of evidence, that's the kind of parliamentary jargon for people coming along and speaking to the committee. So we get submissions from a wide range of people. You have individuals. You've got organisations who've got interests in that particular topic. You've got businesses, experts, all sorts of groups get involved. When people make a submission, they can request to be heard orally. There's a bit of a convention that generally people, if they request to be heard, will be given the opportunity, but it is ultimately a decision for

each committee to make based on how much time they have available and how they want to run their process. And those hearings are held in public. There's a couple of exceptions there, but we won't go into those now. So you do have livestreaming for those hearings, which is basically exactly like what we're doing here. You can watch everything on our Facebook pages, and it's streamed on a couple of other platforms.And just one other thing I wanted to quickly cover here: there is a separate webinar for making effective submissions, but I just wanted to give a little plug here and really encourage people, if you've never made a submission to a committee before, I really encourage you to have a go. There's a list on the Parliament website about what's open for submissions at the moment. You can check that out, or you can wait until you see a topic that you're interested in.And I guess just a couple of quick tips. One of the best things you can do is tell your personal story about how a proposed change to a law might affect you. Members of Parliament love hearing people's personal stories about how things are going to affect them. And the other thing is to talk about specific parts of what's in the bill. That's always a really good way to link into the discussion as well.And one last tip: if you do come and speak to a committee, it's generally not as intimidating as it sounds. Members of Parliament are really experienced in engaging with the public, and we generally try and make it as friendly a process as possible. So do come along and speak to a committee. But if you do, make sure you leave some time for questions, because quite often you see people come along and they'll spend their whole allocated time just reading out their submission or something like that. So, yeah, little plug for leaving time for questions, which we're also going to try and do in our session now.So moving on: consideration. Now, this is, again, just parliamentary jargon that we use around here. It just really means discussing things in private. And I guess an important point here is that, basically, other than when the committee is hearing things from submitters in public, all of the discussions of the committee are done in private like that. Members of Parliament often have really strong views about things, and sometimes those are differing views. And one of the reasons for having those discussions in a closed environment is to really try and facilitate that frank and open discussion and constructive engagement from members.And, as one of the staff members who is in the room for those closed discussions, I can give you all an assurance that that is how the process works. When you close the doors and there aren't cameras around, people really engage in the issues. And, even if they've got strongly held views that may be different from each other, they do generally try and debate those and draw them out and try and find the best outcome for the law change.So I mentioned earlier that committees get advice. Usually, their advisors are Government departments. Committees can appoint independent experts if they want, and some committees do—for example, on tax law,

there's often an independent tax expert helping out with that stuff. And the advice provided to a committee is private to the committee until it reports its recommendations back to the full Parliament. But after that point, it's all published online. So you can read the information that the committees had as they went through with their discussions. But the advisers do attend the public hearings as well as the private discussions, so they are there listening to the issues that you're raising, and they will put their analysis of those issues into their report to the committee, which is, I think, on our next slide, which ties into how committees actually change laws. So this is one of the most exciting parts of the process, from my perspective. After we've heard all of the great submissions from members of the public, the advisers will prepare a report for the committee where they analyse the submissions and the key issues. And that's where that robust discussion happens amongst members about: should we change this; should we not change it; what does the current law do; what does this new law do—really teasing out what they think about things.And when they get to the point when they're ready, they will actually ask for those amendments, those proposed changes to the law in front of them, to be drafted. So it's actually done using what we call revision-tracked changes, where they actually cross out words from the law and they actually write in what words they think should be in there instead. I've got up there an example: the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. It's a long title for a bill, but, basically, what this law was doing was setting up a commission, a body, to look at potential miscarriages of justice. And one of the key issues in this was if they were reviewing whether or not somebody had been convicted wrongly, would they be able to look at the communications between the lawyer and their client? And, originally, the answer to that question was no. They wouldn't be able to see those documents. But we had lots of experts coming before the committee and members of the public saying this is really going to prevent the commission from doing what you want it to do. And so, through that process, everybody on both sides of the committee was convinced that they needed to make a change, and they did. And that's really something that you can see flowing through to the law that's going to affect all New Zealanders. So it's a cool example of the committee process really adding that value.So at the end of the process, the committee reports its recommendations to the full membership of the House. It's important to note that committees don't actually change the law; they make recommendations to the full membership of the House that then the House decides. You can canvass differing views amongst the two sides or more than two sides. You can have differing views amongst members, and those can be included in the report. And, even if the committee can't agree on amendments—maybe they think that you don't need to make any changes or maybe they just couldn't agree on what they thought those changes should be, which does sometimes happen—they can still send a report

back to the House where they outline issues that they heard and the process that they followed so that they can inform all members of Parliament about the work that they've done.And I've just got down there a little point as well that reports from committees don't generally mention specific submitters. That's kind of for fairness so that we don't sort of highlight particular views by name. But I've just one last plug there. Even if you can't really see the way that your submission has flown through the process and whether it's led to a change, it's really contributed to the conversation. And I really can say that members of Parliament do really appreciate hearing from members of the public about the things that they're considering.So one last plug there to get involved and have a say, and do check out the webinar about how to make a submission really effective, if you want to learn more about that. Do we have some questions, Troy?Troy Oh my goodness, we sure do. Yeah, keep the questions coming, everyone. These are amazing questions.Someone's asked: how does Parliament ensure that select committees hear from different perspectives? A concern is that people who work long hours, don't have access to childcare, don't own a computer, etc., will have a much tougher time submitting. Is there a body that works to address these kind of issues, or is there assistance available?Gabor Yeah, I mean, that's a fantastic question and I think it raises a really good point that members of the public do face different kinds of situations in their own lives that might affect the way that they can engage with Parliament.Generally, committees do tend to have their meetings during the week and generally in the mornings—generally between about 9 a.m. and 12. So that is generally when people would have an opportunity to come along to speak to a committee. Occasionally, committees might have meetings outside of those business hours. But that's not particularly common.I think video conferencing has really opened up how people can engage, because they don't have to physically come to Parliament. They can maybe just take 10 minutes out of their day to speak to the committee. And we do find that those video submissions do work really well. But I actually think, you know, that question raises a good point and a good challenge for us to keep thinking about ways we can make Parliament more accessible to people.And, just to address that last bit of that question, there is a body that looks at that. It's one of the other committees. It's called the Standing Orders Committee. And they do look at these kinds of issues about how Parliament can be more accessible and more effective at what it does. I think that's the sort of thing that they would think about.Troy Someone's asked the question: what controls are there to make sure that people who are part of committees are qualified—an example being health experts on the Health Committee, etc.

Suze That's really interesting. I think that goes back to the question someone else asked about are we a representative democracy. Indeed we are. So oftentimes members will have an interest in the topic, and they might be a medical doctor or a nurse before they were any MP and that's why they're on the Health Committee. But they're not on there because they're experts; they're on there because they represent you and me. So Parliament is made up of representatives; it's not made up of technical experts—even though some might be technical experts. That's why they have those advisers that Gabor was talking about.Troy Just going back to your tips on making a submission, Gabor, someone has asked: if you are asking to leave time for questions, does that mean there is a time limit for how long your submission will take? Are you given a set amount of time?Gabor Generally, that is the case: that there is a time allocated. So individuals, members of the public coming to speak to a committee, will usually have about 10 minutes with the committee. Sometimes you have a little bit less if they've got a lot of people to hear from. But generally, it's 10 minutes for individuals. So a good benchmark is to highlight maybe your two or three key points but leave as much of that 10 minutes as possible for discussion. But one thing I'd also say there is that committees can be flexible about that. And if they're having a really great discussion with somebody, sometimes they will go a bit over that 10 minutes so that they can continue that kōrero.Troy We've got a teacher here that's quite interested in your backgrounds. They teach a debating course. And, yeah, they're just quite interested to know how you guys got into politics and what your backgrounds are. Shall we start with Suze?Suze I did a Russian degree, an Honours degree, and I worked as a manager in the NHS, and then I worked at the University of Otago as a manager and various other charities as a manager before I came here to Parliament. And so I spent 11 years learning all about the ins and outs of Parliament, till I became the Deputy Clerk.Troy Cool. David.David Well, I've been working at Parliament basically for 26 years, so it's pretty much been my whole career. Before that, I studied for an arts degree—classical studies, philosophy. I did that to Master's level and did tutoring and so forth, but eventually got a job as a report writer.One of the questions I noticed was: who writes the reports? There is a team of people who support committees by writing their reports for them, and of course the members take those drafts and make them their own. And that was my first job at Parliament. So things have moved on a bit since then.Gabor And just before I answer the question, I just thought I'd also point out that we are all non-political staff, so, technically, I don't think of myself as being in politics; I think of myself as being in Parliament in that kind of supporting role. It does support the political process, but we're all completely impartial and don't have any political favour.

But me, myself, I studied political science at university and did a Master's in political science and then started working here at Parliament after I finished my Master's.Suze And that does reflect the workforce of most of the Office of the Clerk. A lot of them have political studies degrees now, less than just the more general arts degrees in probably more the age range that David and I come from.David We've got a great bunch of people who do have a legal background as well. So we've got all sorts of skills there that support what Parliament does. Of course, we are only a part of the people who work in Parliament. There's the Parliamentary Service as well, and there's many different skill sets there. There’s a lot of people behind the scenes helping Parliament operate.Troy Awesome. Sorry, I'm just keeping an eye on the time there. Keep those questions coming. We'll try and scroll back up and hit some of those, but we're going to move on to our next course. We've gone through the sort of filling of the sandwich, select committee process, and now we're moving on to the other side of that now.Now we're going to go back to David.David Yeah, well, I guess, using the menu analogy, I suppose the second reading is kind of like the main course. I hesitate in saying that, because, really, the most substantive part, I guess, of the legislative process really is that select committee stage, where members really get into the detail and hear those public views and put together their reports. And I think that's a really special part of the New Zealand process. So I guess you could say that that's really serving up the main course, which is what then gets considered at the second reading.So the second reading is really the main debate on a bill, in the sense that this is the point where the bill has been introduced, placed before Parliament, people can read it at that point, and there's been an initial debate, which really is about whether it should go to a select committee. There's been a select committee process to nut out the detail, and this is really the chance for the House as a whole to decide whether this bill is a good thing, whether it supports the bill. So that's really what the second reading is all about.Again, like the first reading, it's got a set number of speeches. So the norm is for there to be twelve 10-minute speeches, although members can, I guess, share those times to a certain extent. So the second reading debate would tend to take about an hour and a half to two hours. So that's the same for all types of bills. So there is a difference when you have the first reading of members' bills, and so forth. But when the bill reaches the second reading, then they've all got the same format in general.The other main feature of the second reading is that that's when those select committee amendments that have been recommended by committees actually are adopted by the House. So the House, on agreeing to the second reading of the bill, is, effectively, adopting the bill in the form that it was reported back by the select committee. So all

those amendments and changes that the select committee suggested would tend to be adopted at that point.Now, there is an exception to that, which is when the members of the select committee have agreed by majority. So where it's unanimous, all those recommendations, all those amendments recommended by the select committee, become part of the bill automatically when the bill has its second reading. But if there are majority amendments—that is, amendments that members disagreed on but were still adopted by a majority of the select committee, then there's an extra question included there on whether those majority amendments should be adopted.And then, finally, the question is decided on whether the bill should be now read a second time. And, for the most part, the answer to that is yes. And the Clerk will then stand up—as Suze mentioned before, the person in the in the black robe will then stand up—and read the title of the bill, and that's its second reading.So have we got any questions about that? It's relatively straightforward. But I guess the key point is that that's when the select committees' amendments really get read into the bill.Troy Any questions about the second reading there, everyone?David Well, shall we move on to the committee of the whole?So the committee of the whole House, which also gets called the committee stage—although that can be a bit confusing, of course, because there are two committee stages: there's the select committee stage that Gabor's described, and now this is a stage where the House kind of morphs into a big committee. So you'll see some changes in the way things are arranged. So the Speaker will leave at that point, and one of the other presiding officers, the Deputy Speaker or one of the Assistant Speakers, will then come and sit at the Table. And you can see that picture there with one of the Assistant Speakers sitting in the middle there in the green chair that Suze described previously. On the Chairperson's right—so that's to our left there in the photo—is the member in charge of the bill. So the Minister will come and sit at the Table, and you'll see one of the clerks, Kelly Harris, there sitting at the Table. And so we are assisting by providing advice to the Chairperson. So there's a bit of a re-arrangement, I guess, of how the personnel are sitting in the Chamber, but there's also a change to the debating rules.And the really key one is that members can speak more than once. So whereas in the House, in the normal sense, members can only speak once on every debate, in the committee of the whole House, members get multiple five-minute speeches. Sometimes they can be consecutive, but then sometimes members can come back and make further speeches later on in a debate.And the idea is that this is the part of the process where all members get a chance to really debate and discuss the text of the bill itself. So we've had the sort of in principle debate on the second reading. When you get

into the committee of the whole House, the members are able to go through the bill part by part and discuss the actual text and debate it. And the really key thing is that they can move amendments. So they can propose further changes to the bill at this point, and any member can do this. And they do that by writing the proposed amendments down—obviously, typed amendments are what we would normally get. And in many cases, those amendments are published in what we call—here's a terrible piece of jargon—Supplementary Order Papers, or SOPs. You sometimes even hear people on the news talking about SOPs, and so forth. They're talking about a set of amendments that one of the members has proposed to change the words of a bill—to maybe take out a clause or insert a new one, or even change a whole part of a bill or delete something. Those amendments can come through, and there's no limit to the number of amendments that members can propose. Sometimes there are quite a few, and sometimes there are none. But you'll usually find that as the bill goes through, at least the Minister in charge will tend to have some amendments published on a Supplementary Order Paper, and then that gets dealt with as they go through the bill. So one of our jobs as clerks is to bring those amendments together and just make sure that members get a chance to decide whether they should be taken into the bill.And then one of the other key differences about the debate in the committee of the whole House is that in technical terms, there's no real limit to the number of speeches. So whereas in the House, you'll remember, in the second reading there were twelve 10-minute speeches, there isn't a set limit for the number of speeches in the committee of the whole House. So as the committee goes through the parts of the bill, then, and members get multiple calls, if they decide not to seek any further calls or make any further speeches, then the Chairperson will put all the amendments to the committee for them to decide the result of on that particular part of the bill and then move on to the next one, if that makes sense.But occasionally you do get what's called a closure motion. So you might, if you watch Parliament TV, sometimes hear a member moving that the question be now put. So that is a motion to end the debate on that bit of the bill. And the Chairperson can accept that motion if, in the Chairperson's view, it's reasonable to do so. The Chairperson will determine that depending on, I guess, the content of the part of the bill that's being debated or the relevance of members' speeches, and maybe if a bit of repetition is coming in, that might make the Chairperson feel like it's time to move on.A really important part of the committee of the whole House is when members stand up and they might ask questions about what particular words mean, and the member in charge—or the Minister, usually—will answer those questions or will maybe get advice from officials. You'll see in the photo there, you've got some people sitting next to the Speaker's Chair there. So the advisers from the departments and the drafters, the Parliamentary Counsel, can sit there and they can step just down on to

the floor of the House next to the Minister and help the Minister answer those questions. It's up to the Minister whether they do answer those questions, but it's quite a helpful part of the process, and the Chairperson might take that into account in deciding whether to keep the debate going. So all sorts of things there.If the Chairperson says, “Yes, it's time to accept the closure motion.”, then the committee will decide that. And, if the answer is, yes, that the question be now put, then they will vote on the amendments and that part of the bill and then move on to the next one. So there is a way of, I guess, shut—Suze David's frozen there a bit.Troy Just while we're waiting for David to come back, there's a question here. Can members obstruct bills by proposing ridiculous amendments, or do proposed amendments at this stage have to be considered?Suze They can certainly—and it is an Opposition tactic, for some particular bills that they don't want to pass or they want to slow down their passage through the House, to propose a whole lot of amendments. But it's the job of the Chairperson in the committee to decide whether those amendments are in order—so if they're allowed to be proposed or not. They can't be ridiculous amendments. So if they put in something and it's clearly not a real amendment—it wouldn't actually go into law—then they can't discuss it and they're not allowed to vote on it. But, yeah, putting up lots of amendments that could work, that's certainly a way of obstructing the speed that a bill moves through the House.Welcome back, David. Now there's two Davids on my screen.David Sorry. I've got an unstable connection at the moment. Not sure why, I'm sorry. I find it ironic that I was just talking about the closure motion at that point and shutting down debate. So maybe I was saying something the Chairperson didn't approve of. So there is a limit, and you'll find that a bill might be dealt with in one evening, say the Tuesday evening. We often get a lot of committee stage on Tuesday evenings, and you'll find that a bill would tend to finish most of its debate in the committee of the whole House in one evening, say. Anyway, if I can attempt to finish this topic. The idea is that the committee then works its way right through the provisions of a bill and decides its final wording and then reports back to the House. So the Speaker will come back in and the Chairperson will get up and report back to the Speaker that the committee of the whole House has considered the bill. So it seems like a bit of theatre, I guess, with the presiding officer changing around like that—and even the clerks; we change around as well—to kind of convey that sense that it's the House changing into a committee and then changing back again into the House. Obviously, it's the House, but it's the whole membership. I guess that's the really key thing about the committee of the whole House. That's exactly what it is.So should we move on to the next slide before I disappear again?

OK—third reading. So the bill's been through that whole process up to this point, and there's been lots of amendments made and submissions and so forth. And this is where the House gets to sign off on the final product. So after the committee of the whole House stage, the bill will be reprinted and there'll be a new version that then goes in front of the House for its third reading. Again, you've got your twelve 10-minute speech format, and members will tend to sort of sum up the content of the bill, the process it's been through, and some of the issues that they came up with. They shouldn't really be talking about the things that didn't make it into the bill or that aren't in the bill; it really should be about the content of the bill itself. But that's really a chance for them to sort of tidy things up and give the House its final approval to a bill.Now, it's really important that you note that there's the three readings, and the rule of the House is that a bill is passed after it's been read three times by order of the House. So that question that the bill be now read a third time is really an instruction by the House. If the House agrees to it, it's ordering the Clerk to stand up and read the title of the bill. And so we have no option. We need to stand up at that point and give the bill its third reading. And once it's been read three times by order of the House, that's when we regard the bill as passed. And so it leaves the House at that point because it's completed that legislative process.I mean, it's not like there's any law of the land that says that a bill has to be read three times. That's really a very strong parliamentary tradition that is embodied in the rules of the House, which leads us to this issue of variations. Now, we've had lots of questions about variations in the process. And I think it's fair to say that although we've talked about a set, sort of, procedure pathway that bills follow on their way through the House, that is really subject to change in the sense that the House can change its rules. It can adjust the way it treats legislation as it goes through, and the rules have changed quite a lot in the last sort of 10-15 years or so. So there's a lot less, sort of, filibustering, I guess, or stonewalling or whatever you want to call it, because the rules of the House have been adjusted so that, really, the process is more facilitative, I guess. The rate of passing laws hasn't really changed in that time. I think members are really trying to focus on, I guess, the important debate on bills as they go through.So the rules can change, but even aside from that, from day to day, the House can treat different bills in different ways. So it can decide that some bills don't need to be debated, say, at the first reading, or, you know, if there's broad support, it can limit the time in the committee of the whole House, or it can even extend the time. So I think the second reading debate on the End of Life Choice Bill was lengthened. So more members got a chance to say things. And I think with the Abortion Legislation Bill, there might have been a bit of a change there as well. So they can actually make the debates last longer. And they can move bills through all stages in one day. Sometimes they do that by unanimous agreement.

So Suze mentioned the three bills that were passed on 25 March. Well, actually, those were done under urgency. Sometimes the House decides to just move bills through different stages by unanimous agreement or through what's called the Business Committee. So that's a committee chaired by the Speaker with representatives of the different parties which makes arrangements through cross-party agreement for how the House does its business. And sometimes it can adjust the time spent on business. So one of the questions we got earlier was—let's see about the rate of passing of legislation. And this is really a way that that can be adjusted, because if a bill has broad support, it can go through quite quickly. And I guess the converse of that is that bills that are really controversial can take more time. And I think that's the constraint on the Government: is it's got limited time in the House and it has to sort of decide how to prioritise that. So, obviously, if a bill is controversial, it'll soak up a bit more time, and that gives them less time to do other stuff. And Governments that are focusing more on maybe issues that have broader cross-party support might find more of those bills passed. So you can see how the rate with which the House passes legislation can depend a lot on the extent of consensus, or not, and the political dynamics that surround a bill.And, of course, the select committee process is really key. One of the questions earlier was about whether the Government can just set the amount of time that select committees get to consider bills. Well, the Government can't, but it can propose times for deadlines for the House to adopt. So Suze mentioned at the first reading the motions that Ministers can move. So that can shorten the time that select committees get to consider bills.So many variations. Anyone who's had anything to do with watching Parliament or being part of its processes will know that it's quite an unpredictable place. It's really the political judgments exercised by members as they participate in it that to a large extent determines the progress of bills. In fact, I think I've answered that next question already. How long a bill takes to go through really does depend on those dynamics and also the size of a bill, the complexity of it, many different things, the extent of public submissions—many elements. So it really is unpredictable.Now, we reach the Royal assent. So the bill has left the House and is going to be put up for the Governor-General's signature. Before we actually get to the Governor-General, though, there is a bit of a process to go through, so we prepare a bill for the Royal assent. Before it even goes to the Governor-General, we have to prepare it, and we have a process of preparing what's called a proof assent—a bit of jargon. But it's really going through, and as a bill is passed by the House, it's had lots of amendments, provisions have been added, clauses have been chopped out, and you can just imagine how the numbering can be quite skew-whiff at the end of that process. So our staff prepare the bill by making the numbering all sequential. And there's a full proof-read, usually with two people—one reading to the other—to go through word

for word, just checking the bill, checking for typos. And also, at the same time, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who drafted the bills, are checking it as well. And our offices will have a discussion about any things that we noticed when that final proof-read is done. I mean, you can go completely cross-eyed. I've got that sort of blurry text in the background of this slide, and it really does start looking like that. That's a page from a tax bill from 2007, which was 3,600 pages long. And you can imagine how a word-for-word read of that would get quite epic. So that's a big part of the process. And the reason why we do that is to authenticate at the end. The Clerk of the House will sign—or, in some cases, the Deputy Clerk, if the Clerk's not available; so Suze sometimes signs them—to authenticate this is what the House passed. There's no fake news here. We've got a certified copy that shows that the bill that gets put up for the Governor-General's signature is exactly what the House passed. It shows the amendments that the House adopted, and it's kosher. It's suitable for the Governor-General to sign.Then there's the process of chasing signatures. Now, after the Clerk or the Deputy Clerk has signed a bill authenticating it, it then is provided to the Attorney-General, who signs to confirm that there's no legal impediment, I guess, to the bill being signed. So, for example, if there's a specific rule about—you know how Suze mentioned those restrictions on the passing of bills that affect electoral law, for example. I guess we have to ensure that that was observed as part of the House's processes. But the Attorney-General will sign. And, if the Attorney-General's not available as the senior law officer of the land, the signature would then be sought from the Solicitor-General. So there's that pecking order. And then the bill is provided to the Prime Minister. So the Prime Minister signs, and this is really the principle that the Governor-General acts on advice from the Prime Minister. So there's a sort of cover sheet, and the Prime Minister will sign on that, advising the Governor-General to sign the bill. And, if the Prime Minister's not available, then we'd go down the order of seniority of Ministers.If the Governor-General is not available, then the assent is signed by the Chief Justice as the Administrator of the Government. So there's a law, the Constitution Act, which says what happens in that situation. Or, if the Chief Justice isn't available, then we'd go down the order of judges. I think the President of the Court of Appeal would be next. So you can see there's a whole bunch of processes to be followed. First, check that the bill is really what the House passed, and then to get that essential ingredient from the other part of the Parliament, the Governor-General on behalf of the Queen, to give assent to the legislation. And it is at that point that we have a law.Now, after the Royal assent, usually there's two copies of each assent that are signed.Suze And, can I just say, they're signed on their goatskin. So we print them on this special paper that's called goatskin, but it's not really from a skinned goat.

David No goats were harmed Suze It's just nice thick cream paper. Sorry, David. Carry on.David Yeah. Good. And so usually two copies—one's kept at Parliament and the other will go off to the High Court. So somebody goes across the road and delivers it to the High Court—so a real, authentic copy of it is lodged with the legal system. And, of course, the fact that the bill has been assented to is then notified. So if you follow the Twitter feed or various other sorts of ways of following these things, you'll get a notification that the bill has been assented to. And, importantly, we'll send a message to the Parliamentary Counsel Office. So they're the people who are responsible for publishing the laws of the land. And they will get the signal then that the bill has been assented to, and they then prepare it to be published on the legislation website as a statute.There we are: the end of the legislative process. Now, we might have a few questions. Have we, Troy?Troy Yeah, we've got quite a few questions. So does every type of bill have to go through this entire process?David Well, as mentioned before, there are variations. I think it is fair to say that all bills have three readings if they're getting passed. So that's a really fundamental rule of the House. So even when they're not debated at a particular stage—so like if it's first reading without debate, the House will still decide that the bill should be read first time, and one of the clerks will stand up and give the bill its first reading. So there's some sort of set elements. Most bills go to select committees—where there was a question before about whether a bill can bypass a select committee, and I think people will know that the answer to that is yes. Occasionally bills do get passed without going to a select committee.Suze Or they can go for a really shortened time. I saw another one of the questions is about the bills that came after the Christchurch shootings. They could go just for a week to a select committee. And that gives people at least some chance to have a say on the bill.David Yeah. I think that's a really fair point. I mean, I guess—so, obviously, people would consider that that's a really short time and would argue about whether that's adequate time for a select committee to consider a bill. And I guess the other side of that is to say that it's better than no time. I mean, there is clearly a benefit in a bill going to a select committee for as much time as possible, and, if there is an urgent need to pass a bill, the Government, I guess, does have the option of putting to the House the idea that a bill can be passed completely under urgency with no reference to a select committee, and that does happen.So I think, during the last term of Parliament, there were 13 bills that were passed without going to a select committee. So that would be sort of out of about 360 or so, I think, that were passed in the last term—or

300 or so. So most bills go to select committee. Some technically don't go to select committees anyway, like the bills about Government spending—they don't go to select committees.And I think that that is an important thing for people to notice, when bills bypass select committees, because, you know, that's a decision that is made by members, by the Government, in terms of how they use the House's time and its procedures. And I think if people are concerned about the way a bill has proceed through Parliament, then I guess that is something for people to notice and for politicians to be accountable for.And they do—as I say, most bills do go through all of those processes. And the timing can really vary.Troy There's a question here. Just going back to committee of the whole House. How many people have to be in the room for the committee to proceed, and do all MPs always come? David That's a good question. Well, I did the photo. You'll recall the photo that we had for the committee of the whole House. There were some seats that were empty. And I think that—there's no quorum apart from—in any sitting of the House, the only requirement, really, is for there to be a presiding officer and at least one Minister.Suze And a clerk to take the notes.David Well, there has to be a clerk, but we don't—yeah, that's right; we're just part of furniture. There used to be a quorum of 15 members, and, actually, I would definitely say there is usually at least 15 members there. Like on a Tuesday evening when you're dealing with a non-controversial bill, you might find that there's not that many members present, but there will usually be at least that sort of number. Sometimes there's much more. So there's no particular requirement. But I think, you know, members are there and they participate, and there's usually no shortage of members who wish to speak on an item of business, or, if there is, then they just move on to the next item.Troy We've got another question here. Do you think that some conventions should be made into law for more security?Suze I would point out that the conventions of the House are decided by all of the parties in the House. So that's actually much stronger, in my view, than the law, which can be—as we've seen, if you've got a majority in the House, just 61 votes—changed. But you need all of the parties in the House to agree to change the rules of the House. So I think it's a much stronger thing than the law.David Well, that is a convention. Yeah. I mean, there is a convention that they change the rules by consensus or that they get overwhelming support, at least, for changes to the rules. And that is something that we really encourage. It means that the rules don't necessarily change easily, but it means that Governments don't necessarily—or they don't really—change rules to suit themselves. The goal posts don't shift. It takes cross-party agreement to adjust the rules of the House.In terms of other conventions, I mean, the Westminster system really relies on the players, the various constitutional participants, to behave in

a way that is constitutional, that respects the arrangements of our system. But, actually, most systems are like that. I mean, in countries where there are constitutions, you still rely on constitutional behaviour to be observed, and that's really an aspect of democracy, and if people are behaving in a way that the public feel doesn't meet their expectations, then that's why we have elections.Gabor Just on that, there's a great quote from a judge in America from some time ago. He had a great name: Learned Hand was his actual name. And he said, basically, that if liberty dies in the hearts of men and women, then no written laws will save us. And I think that's a really great sentiment: that even if you have differing views about what should be written in a law and what shouldn't, what really matters is how much we as a country believe in the right way to do things, and, in New Zealand, there's a really strong sense of that. And the political accountability for the way that things are done, I think, is probably the most important thing, regardless of whether things are written down in a law or not.David Yeah, we had a comment there that we absolutely do have a constitution. Yes, of course. We don't have an overarching sort of higher constitution that exists in many other countries where a constitution is sort of a separate document that sort of sits above statute law. And we absolutely do have a constitution; it's just found in different places. And a lot of it is in ordinary statutes—the Constitution Act, for example. So sorry if I gave the wrong impression there. We absolutely do have a constitution. We have norms as well, conventions. And, on the whole, I'd have to say that we have a pretty high level of constitutional behaviour.Suze And there's a couple of questions there about the Royal assent and has the Governor-General ever refused to sign.And the answer to that is no. Could she? Technically, yes. But because of convention, she won't. And that's mainly because the Prime Minister's signed and said, “Look, I've checked it. I think it's OK. I think you should sign.” And she's relying on the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General's relying on the Clerk, and the Clerk's doing what the House said.And one of the other questions about the Governor-General was: does she actually know what she's signing?And I think that comes down to trust, again, and convention. And it just reminded me of the big uproar there was in the UK when Boris Johnson had advised, as the Prime Minister, the Queen that the Parliament in the UK should stop around the Brexit tie. And there was a huge uproar because people were saying he lied to the Queen. He told the Queen that this thing was true and it wasn't. And we just rely on the Prime Minister not to lie to the Governor-General and say that the bill should be passed when it shouldn't be.David Again, there's really strong conventional issues there. And the presumption is the Governor-General acts on advice from the Prime Minister and other Ministers. And we always seek those signatures and they always are provided. It'd be a really interesting question if one of those signatures wasn't provided. I guess our job is to ensure that bills

that have been passed by the House are provided for Royal assent. And I guess, fortunately, we haven't had to deal with the question of what would happen if any of those signatures failed to materialise.Suze No. And the questions about what stops the Government pushing laws through.The fact that they know that we cannot elect them next time there's an election. That's really the main thing that's stopping them putting through ridiculous laws or laws that are very extreme.David Yes, and the time of the House as well. That mix that the House has of procedures that allow laws to pass so that Governments can implement the mandate, but also constraining them, particularly if there is controversial legislation or legislation that takes a long time. So, really, that's a major constraint: time in the Parliament. And sometimes when members do slow things down, I guess it's to make sure the Government's aware of the price to be paid for passing controversial legislation. And I guess the other constraint I'd have to say is the capacity of the Public Service and the policy support that is provided to Governments to prepare bills and, of course, the political dynamics within a Government. For example, if you've got a party, a Government, that consists of a number of parties, that they are able to agree. So I'd have to say that the change in electoral system potentially has slowed down the rate of legislating. And many would have argued that's why the public voted the way that it did back in 1993. So, you know, all these dynamics are part of that.Gabor I'm just aware that we've got a couple of questions here that we haven't addressed. I'm just wondering if we want to do a couple of quick-fire answers on some of these that we might be able to answer quite quickly.So we've got, for example, the difference between legislation and statutes, which I don't know if I'm best placed to answer this, because I'm not a lawyer, but, essentially, statutes are the laws that are passed by Parliament. So we could talk about the statute book. And to be called a statute, it has to be passed by Parliament. Legislation is really a term for law generally, and there is something called secondary legislation. So we talk about what Parliament passes is primary legislation; secondary legislation is regulations made by the Government and a couple of other bits and pieces. So statute is Parliament only; legislation is more general.Suze When does the Attorney-General check that the bill is inconsistent—or consistent, hopefully—with the New Zealand Bill of Rights? There's a special unit in the Ministry of Justice that checks all of the bills before they're introduced. It's fairly rare, but when there is a declaration made that the bill is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, that's called a section 7 report, and it goes to the select committee so they can look at it at the same time they look at the bill.The question about the—oh, and someone's put up "and Crown Law". That's very good, David. Yes. And Crown Law looks at the Ministry of Justice bills so they don't look at their own bills.

There's a good question about select committees back before. I'm just really going back now.Troy Yeah, so for everyone that's viewing, we're tossing around the idea of a Parliament “Ask us Anything” webinar where you can just bombard the panel with questions of anything you want to know about Parliament. Yeah. So just mindful of the time—we did slot this in for an hour and a half. There's a question here that could be quite good to maybe wrap up on, and then we can keep people posted about that “Ask us Anything” webinar, that next webinar in the line up. I think the next one's maybe on elections. Don't quote me on that, everyone.But someone's asked: you've given us an overview of the process. Can you just give us an indication, on average, how long does it take for the whole process? So from introduction to Royal assent.Suze I'm going to say between nine months and twelve months, on average, but it can be much, much longer and much, much shorter.Gabor And I'll just put in there that the standard amount of time for select committees generally is four to six months, and the default being six. So a really big chunk of that time that a bill takes to be passed is that in-depth consideration at the select committee stage.Troy Yeah, so I've just got word hot off the press our next webinar's actually going to be on petitions. So keep your eyes peeled for any news on the socials about that. I just want to say ngā mihi nui to our panellists. A big thank you for coming and sharing your expertise with us today. And also a big thank you to everyone out there that's been watching from your bubbles across New Zealand. Hopefully, you learnt something new and you can impart some of that knowledge to your family and your whānau. All the best. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll hopefully catch you at the next webinar that we've got lined up. Thanks, everyone.