Hipkins ChrisSTANDING ORDERSHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move That the amendments to the Standing Orders set out in Part 2 of the report of the Standing Orders Committee on the Review of Standing Orders be adopted with effect from the day after the dissolution or expiration of the present Parliament.We must be getting close to a general election because normally when Parliament adopts its new Standing Orders for the next term of Parliament it's one of the last things we do before we cease sitting for the general election campaign which we will do tomorrow after question time and after the adjournment debate has concluded. The triennial review of the Standing Orders is an opportunity for Parliament to make sure its rules are fit for purpose. We do this once every three years although we do have the opportunity to trial new changes in the intervening period and we have certainly done that in this term of Parliament.Parliament has its traditions—traditions we should be proud of—but that doesn't mean Parliament should not continue to adapt and evolve as the world around us continues to adapt and evolve. If we don't do that Parliament will quickly become an irrelevant institution that people will stop listening to.Hon Michael Woodhouse: Who knew!Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: And in fact there are some a few a rare few who perhaps don't find Parliament as engrossing as they used to and I think that's a tragedy.This year's report is one of the more progressive that I've seen in my time as a parliamentarian and I want to thank all of the members of the Standing Orders Committee for what I think was a very collegial and constructive process where we were able to test out some radical ideas. Not all of them made it through the process but we gave them a good go during the process and I think that that was really constructive.COVID-19 forced the Parliament to operate in different ways and one of the things that that did was it forced us to try things that we might not have otherwise tried which as it turned out actually are quite good. We used much more video conferencing and digital engagement through our select committee processes and we found that that actually works quite well. It's a better way of engaging a lot of the public who can't necessarily come and meet with us in person. It's also quite a good way for committees to deal with some of the administrative business that they need to deal with during adjournment weeks where they might not always want to fly to Wellington just to deal with the more mundane administrative matters that sometimes select committees deal with and that was a good thing. We discovered that we can actually lodge papers electronically rather than having to trot on down to the Clerk's Office and hand them over in person. Who knew that that would be possible? But we have discovered that that is something that we can do and that's a very good thing.There are some other innovations in this report which I think do deserve a brief mention. We have looked closely at the issue of petitions. We're seeing more and more petitions coming to Parliament and we do need a better way of managing that process making sure that the petitions are ending up in the right place that they're being dealt with in a timely manner and that those petitions that need a speedy response without an in-depth investigation get the speedy response that they're looking to. So we are establishing a petitions committee that will in the first instance deal with all petitions and they can refer petitions to subject select committees for further examination. We have at long last had a look at the 15 hours that we spend on the annual Budget debate and I think after some consideration there was a degree of consensus that perhaps 15 hours wasn't the length of time that we needed any longer for the Budget debate particularly given it often meant that the Budget debate would go on for three or four weeks in a row and by the time we got to the end of the Budget debate very few people could remember what was said in the first part of the debate and therefore perhaps it was time for us to consider whether that should be shortened. So we've shortened that Budget debate down and that's a welcome development. What's also welcome is that we're using that additional time not for additional Government business but actually to open up some of the other areas of parliamentary activity that wouldn't normally get debated in this Chamber to the level of scrutiny public transparency and of course debate that we have if we can put them on the Order Paper. The Standing Orders report right at the end makes some recommendations about the sorts of things we might want to spend a bit more time debating and I think that those are very good suggestions being put forward there. It gives us an opportunity to debate things like the performance of our Crown entities rules made around climate change briefings that have been provided on the state of the Public Service the opportunity for us to actually look beyond things that don't necessarily just relate to legislation or money which is where most of Parliament's time currently gets spent. It will allow that space for what we've been urged to do which is to look a little bit beyond the horizon to some of the longer-term challenges we face as a country. I think additional debate provides us the opportunity to do that.There are a couple of other very brief things that I want to mention. Ministers are being encouraged to attend select committees more often to talk about their bills and one of the particular suggestions is that where a bill that the Minister should be engaging on is first sent to a select committee it wouldn't hurt if the Minister showed up for the initial briefing on the bill and had some engagement with the select committee at that early stage and we certainly as a committee would unanimously encourage future Ministers to do that. One of the innovations of this term of Parliament that I am really really proud of is the revamp of the way we deal with committee stage debates in this House. They had become repetitive boring formulaic and they were adding nothing to the quality of the legislative process. By moving to more of a question and answer approach during the committee stage both for the committee stage of bills and also for the way we handle annual reviews and the Estimates process I think we are making them much more relevant. We're providing an opportunity for the Opposition to genuinely hold the Government to account and I do mean that because actually I think this process will quickly highlight if Ministers aren't on top of the bills that they're bringing before the House or aren't on top of their spending commitments that they're bringing before the House and I think that's a very positive development. So I think that's an innovation we should all be proud of. It took a while to get everybody on board with it but we have proven in this Parliament that it can work and there was next to no debate about continuing that innovation in the next Parliament because we know that it works and that's a very good thing.One other significant thing that I want to highlight is the ability for members' bills to be introduced automatically rather than having to go through the ballot if they have the majority support of the House of non-Ministers. That stops the Government of the day stacking the members' days with Government business or business that should be Government business but it does give the opportunity for the rest of Parliament out of the control of the executive to have a bit more say over legislation coming before the House and I think that's a positive development. The final thing is a minor thing but it will make a lot of difference to a lot of members of Parliament. Parliament will no longer sit until 6 o'clock on Thursdays regularly. We will now finish at 5 o'clock on Thursdays and we will do that without reducing Parliament's sitting hours by reducing the length of the dinner break on Tuesday and Wednesday from an hour and a half to one hour. It will mean particularly with these very constrained flight schedules that many members now deal with that most members will be able to get home on a Thursday night to their families and not have to stay over for an extra night with many having to wait until Friday morning to get home—a sure sign that we are making progress towards Parliament being a more family-friendly place.So with that I commend these changes to the House.