Digging in: Parliament's grind towards year's end

There's a look in the eyes of many people who work on precinct that tells you they just want this parliamentary year to finish already, but it's not quite done yet.

There's a look in the eyes of many people who work on precinct that tells you they just want this parliamentary year to finish already. But it's not quite done yet and this morning's grinding committee stage action prolonged the torture.

Parliament's in urgency and running later than it normally does towards year's end, as the coalition government continues dismantling the previous government's legacy laws. Among the repeals being passed through all stages under urgency this week was the Resource Management (Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Repeal and Interim Fast-track Consenting) Bill.

As MPs wearily resumed their seats in the chamber at 9am this morning, they were still grinding through the committee stage of this Bill. It's the stage where MPs debate the details. It can last as long as there are still things to discuss, and is the stage when the Opposition can slow things down with proposed amendments and questions to the minister in charge of the legislation. In this case it was the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure, National's Chris Bishop, who was fielding the questions and amendments. Many of them.

Although the MPs have had an arduous year and are desperate to go home, start Christmas shopping or get to their bach in Kinloch, Labour MPs in particular sought to grab their only chance to interrogate the inner details of a bill that's undoing legislation they had passed only a few months ago. They couldn't prevent it being overturned but they could slow it down very slightly. You could say they wanted to make the Government work for it.

As such, the Labour MPs got forensic with their questions and proposed plenty of amendments. And each new amendment proposed gave the MPs something new to discuss, more questions for the minister, a longer debate.

Sometimes amendments are proposed on the go, scribbled on a piece of paper and given to the clerks. Labour's Kieran McAnulty penned one such proposed amendment to this Bill, seen in the picture below. However he pointed out it was incumbent on Bishop to answer a question that McAnulty had been putting to him before the Opposition MP could proceed with the proposed amendment. Bishop then indicated he was happy to look at it, and McAnulty headed off to the printing room. But before he could even leave the chamber, this part of the committee stage was closed off by the presiding officer without McAnulty's amendment getting the chance to be tabled…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details