‘Under Urgency’: Parliamentary code for no time for you, me or democracy?

Sunday, 18 May 2025

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden championed the pay equity changes.

Kevin Norquay is a senior writer based in Wellington, covering social justice, technology and community change.

EXPLAINER: If you want to witness something that utterly fails to live up to its name, go to Parliament when it is sitting under “urgency”.

Urgency last happened a week ago, when the Equal Pay Amendment Bill went through all its stages in Parliament in less than two days.

Using parliamentary urgency, the Government has rushed through changes to the Equal Pay Act that will make it harder for workers to make claims of unfair pay based on gender discrimination.

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden announced the move on Tuesday morning; it passed at 7.45pm the next day.

That is Usain Bolt quick, given standard government legislation typically takes several months to pass into law, although the record is seven minutes, in 1987.

Depending on who is telling the story, the sprint to pass the Equal Pay Amendment Bill saved the country “billions” (government version) - or made it harder for poorly-paid women in female-dominated industries to make a claim (almost everyone else).

Hospice Wairarapa in Masterton celebrating Hospice Awareness Week under a funding and payment cloud.

Urgency was used to throw out - as one example - a hospice pay equity claim filed in late 2023 covering 27 hospices.

Theirs was one of 33 pay equity claims live at the time the Government amended the law; among teachers, Plunket nurses and midwives in female-dominated industries.

A bill dealt with under urgency goes through all stages. Usually legislation cannot be taken through more than one stage each sitting day. Sitting hours may be extended.

One stage dropped was the select committee process during which the public and the Opposition are able to submit on its expected impact.

Usual sitting hours are 2-6pm and 7-10pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 2-5pm on Thursdays.

Richard Prebble and Rodney Hide during an urgency debate in 2009.

Under urgency, the sitting is suspended at the time it normally would finish that day, and the extra hours start at 9am the next day, running until midnight.

This continues until business is completed or the Government decides not to continue. Extra hours are seen as an extension of the day that the urgency motion passed.

All business under urgency is regarded as having been transacted on the same sitting day, and calendars in the House are not adjusted, as they show the date of the sitting day.

But if you go to Parliament expecting to see legislation being pushed through in a gripping and exciting fashion, forget it.

Opposition MPs often despise the use of urgency and do everything they can to slow the process. Among the criticisms are using urgency to avoid scrutiny or public input.

Morally that’s a tough sell for the Opposition, given the previous Labour-led government used urgency 28 times, the most of the last six Parliaments.

The current coalition is up to 22, and only mid-term in its three years.

Anything can be up for debate under urgency.

To watch an urgency debate is to witness a Kiwi version of filibuster, a US term meaning to act in an obstructive manner in a legislative assembly, mainly by making rambling over-length speeches to a smattering of MPs.

Opposition MPs can introduce amendments (some accentuating the ridiculous), speak more than once and raise points of order. Some of this can be quite witty; some of it not so much.

Even though their own party would have definitely used urgency when in power, the filibuster is to protest its use by the political enemy, and to rail against the undermining of the democratic process.

Opposition MPs claim to be making a fuss on behalf of the public about what a crock the whole process is, or to try to rally support in an effort to alter the outcomes.

Anything is fodder for slowing things down. An ACT MP stopped by a security guard from entering the chamber with a cup of tea as it sat under urgency, then raised a series of points of order with the exasperated Speaker.

Water was OK in the House, he said. So what was the problem?

Was it that the water was warm? What then was the allowable temperature, he asked. Or was it the additive (tea)? Given adding aspirin to water was allowable, what additives were not permissible?

To the public all of that is theatre, and quite possibly a waste of parliamentary time and resources. But it all depends what political side you’re on.

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