As parliamentary staff start to read through thousands of submissions on the Treaty principles bill, Shanti Mathias explores how submitting became the go-to way to engage with politics – and asks whether it makes a difference.
While the exact number is currently being confirmed, it seems almost certain that submissions on the Treaty principles bill will total more than 300,000, a new record for levels of public engagement during the select committee process. It’s the latest example of an increasingly popular way for regular people to participate in politics: submitting on bills before they become law.
“The Foreshore and Seabed Act under the Helen Clark Labour government received over 4,000 written submissions, and that was considered a huge number of submissions at the time,” says Eddie Clark, a senior lecturer in law at Victoria University of Wellington, who specialises in how the public engages with the government. “Yet that’s just 2% of the submissions expected for the Treaty principles bill.”
What has changed in the two decades since the Foreshore and Seabed Act was passed in 2004? A rise in submissions isn’t simply because legislation has become more controversial. While the Treaty principles bill and the fast track legislation (27,000 submissions) attracted large volumes, other issues with similar degrees of possible political controversy didn’t: the high-profile law that outlawed displaying gang patches in public attracted only 164 submissions, and the Immigration Act amendment to give further oversight over potential mass arrivals of people seeking asylum in New Zealand on a boat received just 322 submissions.
Nor is the increase in submissions due to leftwing, online groups being mobilised against the National-led government. The current record holder for number of submissions is the ban on conversion therapy, passed by the Labour government in 2022.
Accessibility is one factor, of course. Almost all submissions are now made online, rather than through the post, and it’s more straightforward to open a new tab and type into a box than it is to write on paper, find an envelope and stamp and locate a post box (especially as New Zealand Post services become less frequent and more expensive.) “A one-paragraph comment saying ‘don’t pass this bill and here’s why’ can take five minutes to submit,” Clark says. “The barriers to engagement are lower.”
To him, the investment parliament has made in making the digital submission process nearly seamless is a good thing, even if the thousands of Treaty principles bill submissions stretched the IT systems. “Democracy isn’t just what happens at an election – it’s important for people to be civically engaged outside of elections,” Clark says.
Submissions are made to select committees, which are smaller panels of MPs from all parliamentary parties whose makeup reflects the ratio of parties in parliament. After its first reading, a piece of legislation is assigned to a topical select committee (the Treaty principles bill to the Justice Committee, the fast-track bill to the Environment Committee, and so on). The MPs receive feedback from the public and concerned departments, and compose a report of proposed amendments and further information about the issue that is presented to all of parliament before the second reading. The committee doesn’t have the final say – for example, many of the final changes to the fast-track law were added through an amendment paper after the select committee stage, which is also how a controversial prohibition order addition was made to the gang patch law.
Increasingly, submissions play a role in broader politicking, as political parties, NGOs and activist groups try to make their voices heard – which is why these groups will often make up templates for submissions, contacting supporters and encouraging them to follow the templates.
Traditionally, submissions were considered to be a way to inform the select committee considering a bill about aspects of an issue that may not have been thought about, giving the politicians more detail and ideas to contribute to future iterations of the bill when they report back to the rest of parliament. Clark says that submissions have started to resemble a petition, a way for people to express their opinions about an issue, rather than necessarily engage with the actual wording of the proposed law. In 1985, 800,000 people (many of the signatures doubled up or discredited) signed a petition against the Homosexual Law Reform Bill that made gay sex legal; today, that might have taken the form of hundreds of thousands of submissions instead.
“Parties sometimes treat [submissions] as a really expensive Stuff poll,” Clark says. “It’s not unimportant – it does give you an indication of extremes of public feeling – but there sometimes isn’t a lot of information when many of the submissions are in form templates.” In speeches supporting a bill or opposing it, politicians will often mention submission numbers to back up their position, Clark points out – even if numbers alone aren’t that telling.
Submissions aren’t like votes: not every one is equal, and more submissions against or for a particular bill won’t necessarily make it more likely to pass or fail, especially if the bill is supported by a governing party. Form submissions create volume, but they don’t raise new points, meaning these submissions will be considered together, rather than based on number. “Even if you’ve reworded a form submission a bit, if you’re saying the same thing in the same way as other submissions, it’ll just go into a repeat pile,” Clark says. Individually written, unique submissions, especially those raised by subject matter experts or leaders of relevant organisations, might have more heft.
For example, as part of the university’s role as a “critic and conscience” of society, Clark submitted on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill, suggesting specific wording that included examples of what constituted a conversion practice – language that made it into the final version of the law. “There are some submissions you can make where you can see the throughput, especially if you suggest drafting changes to the language of the bill.” Nearly 70% of the submissions for the conversion therapy ban were templates from activist groups, while 38,900 were written individually. “The unique submissions were all read and analysed, and formed the basis of our consideration of matters in this bill,” the select committee report reads.
On a logistical level, a huge volume of submissions creates extra work for parliamentary staff who support select committees. It’s not possible for every member of the select committee to read all submissions – your words might not end up in front of the eyeballs of a member of parliament, but will be read by someone. This is a huge amount of work, especially because the Office of the Clerk has a fixed amount of funding that is used for reading through exceptionally high volumes of submissions, on top of its normal work.
There’s every sign that the enthusiasm for participating will continue. Thanks to some social media campaigns, more than 20,000 submissions were lodged during the consultation period for a proposed Regulatory Standards Bill, which hasn’t even been drafted or introduced to parliament yet. “Usually it’s just 20 nerds like me whose job it is to think and write about the law who submit on things like that,” Clark says. The calls to submit emphasised potential harmful impacts of the as-yet-untabled bill.
While it creates extra work, there is widespread agreement that public engagement in legislation is ultimately a good thing. “Even people who don’t support my bill appear to be supporting the idea of mass participation in what the Treaty means in 2025. I think that is very, very exciting,” David Seymour told Stuff as submissions on his bill closed. Clark agrees. The volume of submissions might not make a direct impact on a bill the governing party has already promised not to support past its second reading, but participating in democracy is a win in itself. “You don’t have to be an expert for your feedback on a bill to be useful,” says Clark. “There are always things officials don’t know, and we’ve made it easier to have a say. That doesn’t mean your perspective will win, but engaging with the substance of lawmaking is incredibly important for a healthy democracy.”