The coalition government has passed more legislation through all stages under urgency in a single term than any Parliament since records began in 2008, according to Parliamentary Library data provided to RNZ.

The data covers the first 940 days of the current Parliament, to 2 July. Over that period, 17.4 percent of all bills sent for Royal Assent were passed through all lawmaking stages at once, skipping the select committee stage and public feedback entirely. The equivalent figure for the previous Labour government over the same 940-day window was 15.5 percent.

Urgency is a parliamentary tool that lets the government fast-track bills through multiple stages in one sitting, rather than spreading them across days or weeks. Crucially, it often means bypassing the select committee process, where MPs from all parties hear from experts and the public before a bill becomes law.

The total number of bill stages passed under urgency has jumped sharply in the current Parliament, even as the number of bills passed into law has remained steady at just under 200 across the past several terms. The legislative output is not increasing; the proportion of it rushed through without public scrutiny is.

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. He said the use of urgency had been "normalised by degrees" until it became an instrument of convenience rather than of necessity. He pointed to overworked and under-resourced select committees as a related issue, citing the hundreds of thousands of public submissions received for the Treaty Principles Bill as evidence of a system under strain.

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 before it.

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 passed several laws under urgency, including the bill enabling the Covid-19 traffic light system and workforce vaccination mandates.

The urgency figures arrive in a Parliament already showing other signs of pressure. The 2025 sitting year included 87 sitting days, and RNZ reported a record 295,670 written questions during that year. The most recent budget urgency motion, in May 2026, included seven policy bills, three of which were passed through all stages, along with one budget-related tax bill.

Transparency International New Zealand argued in a June 2026 blog post that more than half of the current Parliament's bills are being processed under urgency and called for a positive test, meaning a clear set of conditions that must be met before urgency can be invoked. Victoria University of Wellington's report "What's the Hurry?" documented urgency trends across multiple Parliaments, and the 2023 edition of New Zealand Parliamentary Practice noted that approximately 30 percent of Government bills had historically been passed under urgency with truncated select committee scrutiny.

Parliament's own official guide to the legislative process states that when a bill is passed under urgency it is done so without the benefit of a select committee. The 2023 Review of Standing Orders recommended post-legislative scrutiny reports on bills passed under urgency, to inform the House about implementation of the committee's recommendations.

The Fast-track Approvals Bill, which drew thousands of submissions in opposition, prompted street protests, and attracted claims of constitutional overreach, is among the legislation that has drawn public attention to the scope of executive power over the legislative timetable.

The broader context here is that the numbers point to a structural shift rather than a temporary spike. Total bills passed into law have held steady near 200 per term for several Parliaments. What has changed is the pathway: a growing share of those bills never sees a select committee. The 2 percentage-point gap between the coalition and Labour's urgency rates over the same 940-day window is modest in isolation, but the overall trajectory since 2008 is upward. The 2023 Standing Orders review's recommendation for post-legislative scrutiny reports on urgency bills has yet to be tested against a Parliament using urgency at this frequency. Whether that mechanism, or the extended sitting hours Finlayson proposes, gains traction will depend on whether the parties now in government are willing to constrain a tool they have used more than any predecessor on record.