What members’ bills say about MPs and their parties' priorities

Saturday, 19 April 2025

ANALYSIS: First-term ACT MP Laura McClure had her member’s bill pulled from the very literal “biscuit tin” ballot, and it looks on its way to becoming law.

Like many members’ bills, the contents of her bill are intensely party political, but also personal affairs, where MPs push agendas they hold dear, though always with the blessing of their parties.

McClure’s proposed law would allow an employer unhappy with a worker to offer them a cash settlement through a “protected negotiation” in order for them to leave. It would, says the former small business owner, spare both boss and worker from engaging in a painful and protracted “performance management” process ultimately ending with the worker being fired.

The bill found favour with National and New Zealand First, but was slammed by Labour’s Camilla Belich who said: “It is sometimes hard to go through a performance management process.

“But do you know what is harder? Losing your job for no reason at all. Losing your livelihood and the way you make money for absolutely no reason. And this is exactly what this bill allows.”

Ideologies of left and right clash over members’ bills, but it would be wrong to see those bills as existing in a binary world of left versus right.

Belich’s own Crimes (Theft by Employer) Amendment Bill passed into law in March when New Zealand First gave the bill its backing, making it a crime for an employer to intentionally steal from workers by not paying them.

Since the mixed member proportional voting system, or MMP ,was introduced in 1996 the member’s bill system has got a new lease of life.

The member’s bill system allows MPs who do not hold ministerial portfolios to draft bills. These are then entered into a ballot. Those that get drawn out are debated by Parliament, more often than not leading to their quick demise.

But some lead to big changes.

The decriminalisation of prostitution, assisted dying, same sex marriage and homosexual law reform all started life out as members’ bills.

Another recent example was the long-overdue Income Tax (ACC Payments) Amendment Bill from National MP Hamish Campbell to end the “unfair” overtaxing of compensation paid by ACC to people they had wrongfully refused to pay after an accident.

MPs have to get permission from their party grandees to enter them in the ballot, meaning they speak to the agendas of those parties.

McClure’s law fitted in with ACT’s employer-friendly employment law agenda. Belich’s fitted into Labour’s pro-worker mandate.

But the alignment with party policy is not always perfect.

National MP Greg Fleming has two members’ bills on the go.

One of Fleming’s bills to lift the penalties for modern slavery has been drawn from the ballot and could become law.

The second would add cost to big business by requiring businesses with annual revenue of more than $100 million to report annually on the origin of their goods and the measures taken to ensure they are not linked to modern slavery.

Fleming’s reporting bill is aligned to the mission he went into politics to advance: battling human trafficking and modern slavery, which he says is more common than people think.

It’s also a topic Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he would “march in the streets for” before he was elected.

But it’s not Government policy, because though his boss supports it, adding cost to business through regulation is not something one of National’s coalition partners is up for.

“ACT are not keen on it for that exact reason,” Fleming says. “They want less regulation and burden on business, not more.”

But Luxon’s support could mean that if it gets drawn in the ballot, it may well end up in law, bringing New Zealand into line with other developed countries on modern slavery reporting.

Spheres like the economy, tax, landlords and employment play such a huge role on people’s lives, they also figure highly in members’ bills put forward by MPs.

But so do the country’s democratic settings and the environment.

MPs’ members’ bills illustrate where political fault lines lie.

Employment clash

Labour has decried ACT-led moves to weaken workers’ rights, including McClure’s members’ bill, which ACT has sought to sell as being good for workers. That ideological divide is plainly clear in the members’ bill ballot.

Labour’s Helen White has a bill that would keep the names of employers and workers before the Employment Relations Authority confidential to prevent employers refusing to hire anyone who has taken a complaint against an employer.

Labour’s Jan Tinetti has a bill to ensure employees who take parental leave don’t lose any entitlement to holiday pay.

Belich has bill to make corporate “homicide” a crime.

However, it’s not only left-leaning MPs who want to see pro-worker change.

National’s Vanessa Weenink has a members’ bill aimed at strengthening workers’ ability to share parental leave.

Love and hate for landlords

Nowhere is the political divide clearer than on landlords.

One of the first things the cash-strapped National-led Government did when it got into power was to restore landlord mortgage interest deductions, costing an estimated $2.9 billion over four years.

Labour and the Greens have seven members’ bills to limit landlords’ ability to raise rents, reduce the frequency of house inspections, require the registration of boarding houses, force landlords to provide curtains and make them reveal whether their places are earthquake-prone.

Environmental clash of ideologies

Another schism visible in members’ bills is the battle for the climate.

Green MP Julie Anne Genter’s pro-EV bill seeking to remove fringe benefit tax for five years from zero emissions vehicles was defeated in a vote, though her bill to ban mining on conservation land is to soon be debated.

Green MP Steve Abel, who was once arrested for a tree-top protest to save trees in Auckland, has a bill in the ballot to protect urban trees.

Former Wellington major Celia Wade-Brown has a bill to require all pet cats to be micro-chipped.

And Kahurangi Carter’s Climate Change Response (Limits and Price Control Settings) Amendment Bill seeks to strengthen the Emissions Trading Scheme by empowering the Climate Change Commission to directly set the supply of carbon credits in line with the country’s emissions reduction targets.

On the other side of the house, National MP Joseph Mooney’s bill would ban people from taking civil climate litigation, which, if made retrospective, would be the second attempt by National to intervene in ongoing law suits after it unveiled a law to limit liability in a class action for ANZ and ASB.

ACT’s Cameron Luxton’s bill would see hunters given places on the Conservation Authority board, while National’s Catherine Wedd’s bill would create a new crime of damaging or obstructing state highways, roads, tunnels, and bridges. It was a reaction to disruption caused by rail protesters in 2022.

The highest profile members’ bill though is that of New Zealand First MP Andy Foster, another former Wellington mayor, whose anti-woke banking bill seeks to end banks’ growing practice of factoring climate into lending decisions as they aim to reduce the emissions profile of their lending.

ACT’s Mark Cameron has a bill in the ballot to ban local councils from taking climate into account when issuing business-related consents, arguing climate policy is the preserve of central government.

Alcohol, alcohol, alcohol, alcohol

There are four live sale of alcohol private members’ bills, after ACT’s Luxton saw his bill to remove the restriction on trading and selling alcohol on Good Friday and Easter Sunday defeated late last year.

That may be the least pressing of all issues to be championed in a member’s bill: The right of hairdressers to be able to charge clients for the glass of wine they have along with their cut. That’s the subject of National’s Dana Kirkpatrick’s Hairdressing (Reducing Restrictions) bill.

National’s Mike Butterick’s bill would allow the likes of restaurants to also have an off-licence to sell alcohol for customers to take home.

ACT’s Parmjeet Parmar has a bill to allow only people living within one kilometre of a business seeking a liquor licence to object. “Shops that are licensed to sell alcohol are legitimate businesses,” the start of her bill says.

ACT’s Simon Court has a bill to repeal licensing trust monopolies that still exist in some areas, like West Auckland.

Consumer

Labour MPs have the most consumer protection members’ bills in the ballot, many mirroring laws already in place overseas.

Duncan Webb would see the country follow Australia to put a legal duty on the likes of banks to identify and protect customers from scams. Arena Williams would force banks and money transfer services to be more transparent about costs. Cushla Tangaere-Manuel’s bill would force companies to make it as easy to cancel subscription services as it is to take them out.

Labour’s Ginny Anderson’s member’s bill seeks to end auto-makers’ stranglehold on software that is making life hard and expensive for small car repair businesses. Federated Farmers has protested about similar issues in the tractor repair sector.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson’s right to repair bill, which aims to counter the throw away “planned obsolescence” consumer culture, was plucked from the ballot and survived its first reading with the support of New Zealand First.

Her fellow Green MP Scott Willis’ bill is seeking to have power companies split up to separate generation and retail.

Strengthening, or limiting democracy

One of the biggest issues in politics is the future of our democracy.

Around a dozen members’ bills seek to make changes, some designed to strengthen democracy, and one designed to make it subservient to Treaty tsars.

Labour finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds’ bill would create a Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The International Monetary Fund has criticised New Zealand’s lack of such an agency, she says, something many other developed countries including Australia have.

Its job would be to cost out the promises and policies of parties before elections.

“When election time rolls around, there will be a clear, impartial report on what each party’s plans mean for your wallet, the economy and even bigger issues like inflation and unemployment,” she says.

It would also increase scrutiny of government decisions during their term in office, she says.

New Zealand First MP Jamie Arbuckle’s Conscience Acts Referendums Bill would require any legislation deemed as a “conscience act” by the Speaker, once debated and voted on by Parliament, be put to a public referendum at the next election.

National’s Ryan Hamilton’s bill would ban all prisoners (not just those serving longer sentences) from voting.

National MP Sam Uffindell’s bill would amend the Bill of Rights Act 1990 to extend the right to vote in “genuine” periodic elections by equal suffrage and secret ballot for members of local authorities.

Labour’s Greg O’Connor has a bill to effectively ban multiple property owners from voting in more than one council election.

That’s a bill that would, if passed into law, end some councils having put in place systems to give Māori electors’ votes more weight than those of other voters.

Te Pāti Māori is “not a fan of democracy”, which its co-leader Rawiri Waititi says is “the tyranny of the majority”. MP Tākuta Ferris’ Treaty of Waitangi (Empowerment of Waitangi Tribunal) Amendment Bill seeks to make the democratic will of the people as expressed through Parliament subservient to rulings of the Waitangi Tribunal.

It would give the Waitangi Tribunal the ability to make “recommendations” for changing existing or prospective laws where it decided they were “contrary to the principles of the Treaty”. These recommendations would be binding on Parliament.

The bill would also “entrench” the law by allowing it to be repealed only by a super majority of 75% of MPs voting to get rid of it.

Crime and punishment

National is the party with the most members’ bills focused on crime.

Bills to make it easier to constitute juries, increasing sentences for killing police dogs, creating a new “coward punch” crime, and denying parole to killers who do not reveal the locations of bodies, are all in the mix, along with Fleming’s slavery penalty bill and a bill to allow police to bill private events for providing policing.

The left is not entirely absent from the crime push as Belich’s wage theft and corporate homicide moves show.

Labour’s Priyanca Radhakrishnan would outlaw virginity testing, while fellow Labour MP Tangi Utikere would extend the clean slate bill to cover ex-criminals who were sentenced to up to 12 months in jail, but had stayed on the straight and narrow for 10 years.