The House

Foreign Affairs is a portfolio that Winston Peters often receives bi-partisan congratulations on. In an otherwise adversarial scrutiny week, his hearing with the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee had a bastion of amicability and trust.

This week at Parliament is Estimates Scrutiny week, when Ministers face Select Committees to defend their budget plans. We talk with Green MP, Lawrence Xu-Nan, a star scrutiny performer from last time round. As a former academic and one of a number of MPs with a PhD, Xu-Nan has the brutal research experience that is surely useful for digging into something as labyrinthine and esoteric as a budget.

For electorate M Ps, weekends are generally spent in the community meeting constituents. The House popped into a morning tea Q&A hosted by Matt Doocey.

Parliament and the Courts are different branches of our democracy. On Thursday, during the debate on MP punishments they overlapped.

The Government had three things on its to-do list for the week. It managed... some of them, including the one that allows its own continued survival.

This week the Health Committee heard oral submissions on the Government's Medicines Amendment Bill, which speeds up the approvals process for medication.

Parliament, with an early history saturated in alcohol, has had no in-house bar at all for months. It seems almost no-one even noticed. The new bar, Pint of Order, has now opened and its dinky size may show just how much Parliament has changed.

The House chats with two long serving MPs to get some insight into some of the political strategy behind member’s bills

After the first few speeches of the Budget Debate, the House knuckled down for a long and jam-packed dose of urgency.

The opening stanzas of a new budget begin in quiet formality, but get loud and political quickly.

The House sits down with Clerk Assistant James Picker to chat through the Budget process and what you can expect to see in the House on the day.

The highly anticipated debate on the report of the privileges committee only lasted for about 25 minutes before it was cut short by a surprise adjournment motion.

Former Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand talks about the role’s interlinked relationship with Parliament and the Executive, and as a guardrail for democracy.

Parliament's Speaker, Gerry Brownlee spoke to MPs on Thursday about the Privileges Committee's unprecedented recommendations for punishing Te Pāti Māori MPs. His response was telling. We decode his comments. Note: A slip of the tongue in this episode causes MP Duncan Webb to be renamed Duncan Green. Apologies.

The commitments that public organisations are subject to under treaty settlements are being treated like transactions, not relationships, says Auditor-General John Ryan, who briefed the Māori Affairs Committee on the issue this week.