Table of Contents
Summarised by Centrist
What looked like a legislative blunder was actually a tactic: Paul Goldsmith engineered a way to reinsert measures Parliament had already ruled out of scope.
In the chamber, it looked like Goldsmith had “forgotten to include key aspects” in his bill and was asking the Justice Select Committee to patch it.
Opposition MPs attacked him for a “disgrace” and incompetence.
Goldsmith’s office later confirmed the minister had intentionally left out measures that had been ruled outside the bill’s scope, then sought to add them back in via a select committee instruction. The manoeuvre, according to RNZ’s Paul Smith, was designed “to dodge Parliament rules about what can be included in a bill”.
The Crimes Amendment Bill was already a mixed set of changes to the Crimes Act. Goldsmith also wanted to tack on amendments to the Summary Offences Act, which is normally barred unless everything serves a single objective or the cross-party Business Committee agrees.
Instead, the workaround leaned on parliamentary sovereignty. Smith notes Parliament “can also give itself permission to break” its rules with a simple majority vote. Goldsmith invoked that power by moving to extend the Justice Committee’s powers “despite Standing Order 264(2)”.
Smith warns it “seems like a potentially dangerous manoeuvre” that could drag New Zealand toward a “pick ’n’ mix” style of lawmaking, where unrelated measures get bundled in and scrutiny weakens.
One other detail Smith flags is Goldsmith did not explain the plan at the time, and National MPs did not defend him from attacks. Smith suggests the minister either did not care, or preferred to look clumsy rather than admit he was outmanoeuvring the intent of the rules.
