New Zealand First leader Winston Peters keeps silent upon his arrival in Wellington ahead of negotiation talks with National and Act.
Video / Adam Pearse
Labour set a furious pace trying to pass new laws through Parliament in its last months in power, but not everything has made it through.
Instead, 52 bills were still being debated and worked on when Parliament closed on September 8 ahead of the election.
Natasha Wilson, public law specialist at Buddle Findlay, says a new Government will typically on its first day in Parliament reinstate a lot of old bills by putting them back up for debate.
Some bills may be uncontroversial and continue smoothly to becoming new laws.
Some may be significantly rewritten and debated again before becoming law.
Others will be scrapped immediately because the new Government doesn’t agree with them.
This bill would make ram raids a new crime, punishable by up to 10 years in jail - and give police the power to charge offenders as young as 12.
It would also make it possible to take body samples from 12-13-year olds, and make publishing or live-streaming ram raid footage an aggravating factor during a court sentencing.
National earlier supported the bill but criticised Labour for trying to rush it through Parliament under urgency in its last sitting week.
The biggest change proposed by this bill is increasing the trustee tax rate from 33 per cent to 39 per cent - thus bringing it into line with the highest income tax rate.
New Zealand’s estimated 400,000-plus trusts are typically used to protect assets, like family homes. An example could be to help stop creditors from claiming the home of a failed business owner.
Some accountants have criticised the bill for applying a blanket 39 per cent tax to all trusts when some trustees earn lower incomes and pay only 33 per cent income tax.
National and Labour support a bill now in Parliament that would make ram raiding a new crime and allow police to charge offenders as young as 12. Photo / Hayden Woodward
This bill would replace the 1983 Civil Defence Emergency Management Bill that was brought in to create 14 civil defence bodies instead of leaving emergency responses to 86 local authorities.
Supporters of the bill say the loss of life, economic cost, frequency and complexity of recent natural disasters highlighted the need to ensure all laws are up to date.
The first of these bills would give a Family Court judge greater power to stop a person from taking further proceedings if they are using the court to harass another person.
The latter would give sexual assault victims more control around the suppression of their names. It would also ban child victims of sexual assault being asked questions about consent.
This bill would make surrogacy easier by streamlining the legal process parents have to step through.
Under the bill a child’s parents would legally become parents at the moment of birth. Currently, parents must wait until after the birth before legally beginning the process of adopting the child.
The bill would also allow surrogates to be compensated for the cost of surrogacy.
The bill is also an example of a Members’ Bill - bills introduced by individual Members of Parliament, rather than a whole political party.
Members’ Bills typically deal with less sweeping or financially costly changes. As such, new Governments typically allow most Members’ Bills to continue passing through Parliament.
Former Labour MP Tamati Coffey lost his seat during the election but took to Facebook recently to say another Labour colleague would continue to champion the bill.
“It’s not controversial, it’s widely needed,” he said in hoping it receives bipartisan support.
This bill would allow wineries with licences to sell takeaway alcohol to also be able to charge visitors for wine samples without needing a separate licence to sell on premise.
Politicians may love a tipple because this one passed its first reading in Parliament with overwhelming support.
Bottom trawling - the technique of dragging a weighted net along the seafloor to catch more fish - would be mostly banned in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf under this bill.
It would also create 12 new “high protection areas” and enlarge marine reserves at Cape Rodney and Whanganui a Hei.
Environmental group WWF-New Zealand welcomes the announcement, while fishing lobby Seafood NZ raised some concerns, saying bottom trawling was used for 70 per cent of nation’s commercial catch.
News of a new marine park in the Kermadec Islands about 800km northeast of New Zealand was announced with much fanfare by the National-led Government at the United Nations in 2015.
However, a bill for the ocean sanctuary is still passing through Parliament.
This bill seeks to allow authorities to detain asylum seekers - who arrive in groups of 30 or more - for 28 days without a warrant or special legal order.
National opposes the bill, saying it isn’t making any significant changes. But Labour said this bill seeks to strengthen a law National introduced in 2013.
This bill would create a “bargaining code” for New Zealand media companies to negotiate payment from big tech firms for stories used on social media platforms.
A list of the laws in limbo:
Accessibility for New Zealanders Bill
Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) (Overseas Travel Reporting) Amendment Bill
