Parliament's ground-breaking Friday sitting has been cancelled.
It seems that MPs, faced with an extra morning at work, decided with unusual
consensus to get through a raft of bills on Thursday night.
It would have been the first Friday sitting in history without the government
putting parliament into urgency to pass important legislation.
Under new rules agreed by all parties, it can ask for extended hours to
progress routine bills and that's what happened on Thursday night when it went
past the usual 6pm adjournment and sat until 10pm.
Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson had planned to use the Friday
sitting to pass two settlement bills through first readings and four through
second readings.
A spokesman told NZNewswire all the bills went through those stages and a
statutes amendment bill passed its first and second readings - all in less than
three hours.
NZN