Peter Dunne provides an interesting perspective on the Government’s choice of election date.
This year’s general election will be held on November 7; a date least encumbered by other events, and the last realistic date which gives post-election government formation talks the best chance of being completed before the Christmas break. Parliament is required to meet no later than two months after an election (by January 7, 2027) so an early November election makes it possible for the new Parliament to be convened in (probably) the week before Christmas.
Aside from heralding the informal start of the election campaign, the formal announcement of the election date also kicks off some other processes. The most significant of these is the Period of Restraint. This is a bureaucratic device, with little to no constitutional standing, which has been engineered by officials over recent years to constrain governments from using the instruments of state for too much overt political work in the lead-up to an election.
The Period of Restraint has come to be applied for the last three months before an election – in this year’s case from August 7. Under this specious device, governments are not expected to make significant appointments or initiate new policies or information campaigns during the three months prior to an election. That completely overlooks the reality that governments are elected to govern for a full three-year term and that they retain their full authority until election day.
The upshot is that for the last three months before an election, the government of the day is effectively reduced to caretaker status. When the two months or so of post-election negotiations is added, the period of caretaker rule could be up five months or more, to the bureaucrats’ delight.
According to the timetable approved by Parliament before last Christmas, Parliament will sit for 22 weeks (66 days) before rising on September 24 and being formally dissolved on October 1 for the election. But five of those sitting weeks come after the Period of Restraint begins, leaving just 51 sitting days available to the Government to introduce new legislation to progress its agenda.
When the time allowed for set-piece debates like the Budget Debate, the Estimates, and the Prime Minister’s statement is factored in, the time available to the Government to progress its legislation, without resorting to Urgency, or extended sitting hours, could reduce to much nearer 42 to 45 sitting days.
Parliamentary timetable suggests May 28 is a likely date for the presentation of the 2026 Budget. Parliament goes into a two-week recess following that, and ministers get time to get around the country promoting the Budget (and the government generally) before Parliament resumes in the latter half of June.
These factors were obviously at the back of the Prime Minister’s mind as he developed his state of the nation speech last month. The tight Parliamentary timetable meant he needed to be careful about the commitments he made. Of the three priorities he identified, only resource management and planning law reform is likely to be completed before the Period of Restraint commences.
The Government will be keen to progress through Parliament as many as possible of the large number of other Government Bills currently before select committees before the House rises for the election. But any new legislation introduced this year is unlikely to pass before the election, unless it is urgent or enjoys cross-party support. Rather, the Government’s priority will be clearing its legislative decks, and leaving as little Parliamentary time as possible for the Opposition to promote the issues it sees as important.
Implications for voters
The timing of the election also has significant implications for voters. Under changes to the Electoral Act last December, voters will now no longer be able to enrol to vote on election day, as had been the case since Labour’s 2019 amendments.
This year, the closing date for voter enrolment will be October 26, thirteen days before the election, and the same day early voting begins. If the trend of recent elections continues, most voters will have voted by election day.
Many voters will also be voting in new electorates following the redrawing of electorate boundaries by the Representation Commission promulgated last August to reflect population shifts identified in the last Census.
While all these dates define many of the formal elements of the general election, there will still be many twists and turns to go through before the next government is installed and the normal processes of government resume.
All of which contribute to the fascination of politics.
Some of our ministries have been thinking