Dog, hog or whoever’s breakfast it is, it’s hard to not feel like a mess after a week of urgency.
It’s the last sitting block of the year, and there are three little letters on everyone’s minds: RMA. Unfamiliar with the concept? It’s not Rowdy MPs Arguing, Regulations Must be Abolished nor Really, this Mess Again? It’s the Resource Management Act, which this week received a makeover so severe it now has two faces: the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill, which will come into effect by 2029 – unless another government repeals them first.
But announcing major reforms so close to Christmas also means parliament was sent into urgency for the umpteenth time this year. Under urgency, every minute counts, whether you’re on the government side trying to speed things up with a minute-long speech, or on the opposition side submitting as many amendments as possible to slow the process down.
So, take a moment to consider how speaker Gerry Brownlee must have felt to see members of the public disrupting Tuesday’s question time session. It’s bad enough to have to sit there and be lectured by the MPs, let alone the peasants in the public gallery having the gall to scream something about Palestine and throw leaflets into the chamber. Never fear: our brave speaker has now banned the public and their “performative art” from the chamber for the rest of the year.
That question time session also saw Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, who was reinstated as a Te Pāti Māori MP the week before, move a row forward in the seating chart, but still behind her estranged party leaders. And following question time on Tuesday, the House spent eight hours trying to pass an amendment bill to extend the duration of consents under the RMA as a stop-gap before the replacement bills are passed.
The process vibed like those late nights in university spent trying to get something legible through to the tutor before you miss the deadline. But the bill was passed by Wednesday morning, and by that point, there was another sideshow to keep parliament entertained: the possibility of a showdown between finance minister of the day Nicola Willis and Ruth Richardson, finance minister of days past.
By question time on Wednesday, the RMA was still on the government’s mind, but Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ was stuck on more philosophical wonderings. He wanted to know if when Luxon “begins an answer with ‘what I would say to you is’, will he ever follow that with an actual answer to the question that’s being asked?” And Luxon rose to his feet: “What I’ll follow it up with is: outcomes, outcomes, outcomes.” It’s unfortunate there was no one in the public gallery to hear the prime minister’s one good gag.
When Labour MP Willie Jackson got up to question Māori development minister Tama Potaka on funding for Te Māngai Pāho and Whakaata Māori, the minister showed his age. In praising Whakaata Māori’s programming, Potaka made sure to shout out Homai te Pakipaki, the Māori talent reality TV programme that debuted in 2007 and ended in 2015. The namedrop gave Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi some pause: “What are you watching? That show ended ages ago!”
Following question time, the gears of urgency ground along. The Fast-Track Approvals Amendment Bill passed its third reading around 11.30pm that night, before the House moved onto the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill, which replaces plans made by the last government to ban farrowing crates for pigs with a few tweaks to how long sows can spend in these crates, and the minimum spacing requirements.
The animal welfare bill “goes against the law and the courts, it goes against public opinion, and it goes against industry certainty”, the Greens’ Steve Abel told the House. “In every sense, it is a pig’s breakfast.” And then a little voice piped up: “A ‘dog’s breakfast’ is actually the saying,” Act MP Todd Stephenson corrected him. “A ‘pig’s breakfast’ is a saying as well,” Abel responded.
“No, it’s not,” Stephenson pressed. “Look it up,” Abel replied. “ChatGPT!” cried another voice who wanted to have some kind of stake in this bet. To clear things up, The Spinoff has fact-checked these claims: “a pig’s breakfast” is, indeed, another way of saying “a dog’s breakfast”. Dog, hog or however you want to describe a mess, the bill passed its third reading after question time on Thursday anyway.
And parliament was still sitting by 1am on Friday, with the opposition trying to slow down the passing of the controversial Electoral Amendment Bill. The bill revokes voting rights for prisoners, curbs same-day enrolments and creates a 13-day cut-off period before election day to enrol or update your details. But it won’t get its third reading until next week – there were so bloody many amendments tabled and on which party votes were called, and the government needed to move onto the next important order of business: lowering our 2050 methane targets.
Urgency, especially when it’s called for under the guise of hurrying along an RMA amendment, can leave you feeling like you’re wading through the trough of a pig’s breakfast. Maybe it’s better for the public to be saved from having to witness the messy (and too often uninspiring) mechanics of parliament – or maybe banning them from the public gallery makes the eventual divorce between voter and the elected a bit easier.
