David Seymour says the responses to the bill are being driven by the large amount of public engagement with Parliament. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
More than $270,000 dollars has been spent on hiring and backfiilling staff to support the Justice Select Committee in considering the Treaty Principles Bill.
The committee, who received an unprecedented number of written submissions, is hearing another seven hours of oral submissions on Friday.
The Clerk of the House confirmed eight additional fulltime temporary staff were assisting the committee, with a projected cost - until 14 May - of $189,000.
That is on top of the eight fulltime permanent staff the Clerk has allocated to the committee. Overtime for permanent staff in support of the committee is forecast to cost around $13,000.
Because of the extra support needed by the Justice Committee, the Clerk is recruiting additional full-time temporary staff to backfill the other 11 select committees. That is at a cost of $70,000, until 30 June.
The Clerk said this occurs on a case-by-case basis based on "financial constraints" and "resourcing availability" in the team and wider organisation. Any direct comparisons with other bills that have required extra resource weren't available, the Clerk said, because previous instances have covered a variety of tasks.
Labour's Justice spokesperson Duncan Webb told RNZ the money and resource being spent was "deplorable." Webb added the Treaty Principles Bill was "vexatious and an abuse of parliamentary procedure".
"It is a disgraceful misappropriation of public resources to promote ACT Party ideology with the National Party's collaboration."
Outside of this, the Ministry of Justice has engaged a private consultancy firm, Allen + Clarke, to assist with analysing submissions.
Ministry of Justice deputy secretary in policy Caroline Greaney said in a statement when there were significant numbers of submissions, departments were allowed to "employ the services of third parties who specialise in analysing large amounts of data", according to Standing Orders.
Greaney said the extra work was being met within baseline funding and didn't provide RNZ any costs.
The Minister responsible for the Bill, David Seymour, told RNZ the responses were being driven by the large amount of public engagement with Parliament.
Seymour said making it possible for the public to engage with democracy was the "best possible use of Parliament's funding".
"It is, after all, the People's Parliament."
