22 May 2025
Speakers: Dr David Martin Wilson (Clerk of the New Zealand House of Representatives: ‘Clerk of the House’); Stephen Fujiwara (Principal Council Officer, Legislative Council, Parliament of New South Wales) , Jessie Halligan (Principal Council Officer, Legislative Council, Parliament of New South Wales) & Kara McKee (Principal Council Officer Legislative Council, Parliament of New South Wales).
Chair: Dr Sarah Moulds, University of South Australia and Deputy Chair of IPEN
Details: This IPEN seminar will focus on how the Parliament of New Zealand and New South Wales Legislative Council have managed high levels of submissions from the public in connection with public engagement exercises around legislation.
In early 2025, the highly contentious and sensitive issue of changing the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand, raised by ACT Party Leader David Seymour MP, prompted an unprecedented wave of public submissions to its Parliament. This coincided with huge Māori protests in New Zealand opposing the proposed changes. Inside the Parliament, extra staff were employed to vet more than 300,000 responses to the Seymour proposal, leading to questions about how to deal with such large volumes in the future. Clerk of the House Dr David Martin Wilson will speak about how the New Zealand parliament managed this experience, and how it intends to approach ‘managing the submission surge’ in the future.
In the second part of the seminar, Stephen Fujiwara, Jessie Halligan and Kara McKee will discuss their experiences managing parliamentary inquiries with thousands of submissions and substantial public interest in the Parliament of New South Wales. Drawing upon three case studies (relating to inquiries concerning reproductive health care, voluntary assisted dying and birth trauma), the speakers will examine the logistical hurdles associated with receiving, reviewing and considering thousands of submissions, managing heightened public and media expectations, and the strain placed on small secretariat teams with limited resources.
Taken together, these insights will be relevant to parliaments around the world struggling with the challenge of ‘managing the submission surge’ whilst continuing to encourage and value public engagement with parliamentary business and processes.
Images:
1. New Zealand Parliament building. Image by Squirrel_photos from Pixabay.
2. Parliament of NSW, Sydney, Australia. Photo by J Bar at the English-language Wikipedia. License: CC BY-SA 3.0.