Coalition government bills have been rushed through all parliamentary stages at once at a higher rate than under the previous Labour government, with 17.4 percent of bills sent for Royal Assent in the first 940 days of the current Parliament passing without select committee scrutiny, according to Parliamentary Library data provided to RNZ. Over the equivalent 940-day period, the Labour government passed 15.5 percent of bills in the same all-at-once manner. The data, covering the period to 2 July 2025, also showed the total number of bill stages passed under urgency has jumped, while the number of bills passed into law has remained steady at just under 200 across the past few terms.

The findings place the current Parliament's use of urgency at levels not seen since 2008. Under New Zealand's Standing Orders, a bill dealt with under urgency may be introduced and passed through all its stages without going to a select committee, though Standing Orders 273 and 274 govern the passing of bills, associated bills, supply bills and bills under urgency, and the 2023 Standing Orders require a bill to be read three times by order of the House.

Former Labour Prime Minister and Attorney-General Sir Geoffrey Palmer said the coalition government's use of urgency was not about coping with large volumes of legislation but about avoiding the scrutiny of select committees, a claim the government rejected. Palmer said governments of all stripes had used urgency, but not on this scale, and that its use had been normalised by degrees until it became "an instrument of convenience rather than of necessity." In an RNZ interview, he said the normal checks and balances were stripped out when laws were made at pace, and that urgency has become the default mechanism for dealing with legislation. In a Newsroom commentary, Palmer described the overuse of urgency as "drastic," saying legislation is passed too quickly with not enough scrutiny.

Palmer said "impatience is a very bad thing for lawmaking because legislation can be got wrong, and it has to be done in a solemn and serious way." He also pointed to overworked and under-resourced select committees as a related issue, noting the government received hundreds of thousands of submissions for the Treaty Principles Bill and people were given about five minutes to be heard.

Chris Finlayson, Attorney-General in the John Key government, said the data pointed to a need for Parliament to consider extending House sitting hours given the complexity and volume of legislation. The House can already sit into a subsequent sitting day under urgency, including under extraordinary urgency or when a bill under urgency is subject to many votes on amendments following a closure motion.

Shadow Leader of the House Kieran McAnulty said National criticised Labour's use of urgency during the pandemic but then quickly surpassed those figures once in government. The previous Labour government used urgency to pass several laws, including the bill enabling the Covid-19 traffic light system and workforce vaccination mandates. McAnulty said discomfort with the high use of urgency is reflected in submissions to Parliament's Standing Orders Committee, which will consider rules for the next Parliament before the November election.

The New Zealand Law Society's submission to the Review of Standing Orders 2026 stated that the use of urgency can limit Parliamentary and public scrutiny of legislation and prevent meaningful public consultation on proposed reforms. Transparency International New Zealand made a similar argument in a June 2026 report titled "Time to Raise the Bar: The Case for a Positive Test for Urgency in New Zealand Parliament," arguing that urgency can limit Parliamentary and public scrutiny of legislation and prevent meaningful public consultation on proposed reforms.

The broader question the data raises is whether the institutional safeguards around urgency are adequate. The select committee stage exists to allow public input and detailed clause-by-clause examination of legislation; when bills skip that stage, the public's ability to influence law is curtailed. The Standing Orders Committee's review, with submissions from the Law Society, Transparency International and others, provides the mechanism for any tightening of the rules before the next Parliament sits. Whether that review produces substantive change, or incremental adjustment, will shape how future governments use urgency and how much scrutiny bills receive before they become law.