Speaker says Beehive may need to be vacated, Parliament should sit longer

Wednesday, 17 June 2026

The Beehive will likely need massive maintenance upgrades in the coming years, with one proposal requiring it to be completely vacated for 18 months.

Speaker Gerry Brownlee expects the Government and Speaker serving in the next parliamentary term to decide how to handle the significant relocation.

Brownlee has formally proposed to a cross-party committee that Parliament increase its sitting hours after the next election to clear a large backlog of bills.

A new building behind Parliament House is set to open early next year, with one full floor unusually allocated to emergency services.

In the not-too-distant future, the Speaker says those in the Beehive may need to be “relocated” for repairs. He is also urging politicians to agree to have Parliament sit more often.

Parliament’s Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, raised both issues on Wednesday during a Scrutiny Week hearing. Both potential changes could significantly alter the day-to-day running of Parliament after November’s election.

The Beehive houses ministerial offices, under the prime minister’s office and Cabinet office. Hundreds of staff, and almost every minister, work in there.

Brownlee also revealed he had asked the Standing Orders Committee, a cross-party group of MPs who consider the rules of Parliament, to have Parliament sit more often in the future.

“I think Parliament doesn’t sit long enough. That is my strong view,” he told the the Scrutiny Week hearing.

After the hearing, he told Stuff he’d proposed having Parliament sit more hours during sitting weeks. He wouldn’t go into further details on his proposal, while MPs were considering it.

He said Parliament needed to sit more because there were a lot of bills waiting to be debated, bills which had already undergone select committee scrutiny.

While there was a lot of work for politicians to do outside of the debating chamber, he said there was clearly a lot of lawmaking that needed to happen.

“While people have a view that Parliament only sits for 30 weeks a year, and sits for about 17 to 18 hours per week for 30 weeks a year, that is just a fraction of the work that gets done. Select committees sit during the mornings, caucuses meet during the morning. There are numerous evening meetings,” he said.

Any change to the hours of Parliament would take effect from after the election, if agreed by the current Standing Orders Committee.

Brownlee also raised another issue which next term’s MPs would need to grapple with.

He said the Beehive would need significant maintenance completed in the coming years, and one proposal he had seen would require that it be vacated for 18 months.

“It's not something that's on the cards at the moment. The reality is, all buildings, once they get to that 50-plus-year age bracket, start to show signs of needing fairly significant upgrades,” he said.

He said he expected the Government and Speaker serving in the next term of Parliament would need to decide what to do about the Beehive.

“But the reality is that if you’ve got structural work being done to the exterior of the building, just the noise factor alone for those who work there would be quite distracting,” he said.

A significant infrastructure development was already underway at Parliament, with an entirely new building being constructed at the back of Parliament House.

Brownlee said that building was intended for use by members of Parliament and was set to open early next year. However, he said, “emergency services are taking an entire floor inside that building - which I think is a little unusual, but a previous Government made that decision”.