{"id":289910,"date":"2026-02-18T12:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289910\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T12:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:15:10","slug":"government-scraps-plans-for-referendum-on-four-year-term-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289910\/","title":{"rendered":"Government scraps plans for referendum on four-year term"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4K5B1A1_250624_Paul_Goldsmith_1_jpg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"250624_bridge_war_Conflict\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nJustice Minister Paul Goldsmith.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Mark Papalii\n<\/p>\n<p>The government has scrapped plans to put a four-year Parliamentary term to a referendum in favour of progressing other legislation.<\/p>\n<p>It <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/543151\/four-year-parliamentary-term-legislation-to-be-introduced-would-go-to-referendum\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">introduced a bill last year<\/a> with a caveat that the term would only extend to four years if there were greater checks and balances on the government of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said both coalition agreements secured support to get the bill to select committee but no further.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve fulfilled those commitments. However, we won&#8217;t be progressing with a referendum on a four-year term at this election.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He cited the time constraints as the primary reason for ditching a binding referendum.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To have a referendum would require passing the bill through the rest of its stages, with enough time to prepare.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s something that a future government might do, but our priority is progressing legislation that will help fix the basics in law and order.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>New Zealand and Australia are outliers in having three-year parliamentary terms; four or five-year terms are far more common.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/571904\/four-or-three-years-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-push-to-lengthen-parliamentary-terms\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">arguments for a longer term<\/a> include that there three years is too short for a government to accomplish its goals, with the first year settling in and the third year all about gearing up for another campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Those wary of allowing longer terms argue New Zealand lacks certain checks and balances on government power other countries have, such as a Supreme Court that can strike down legislation or an upper house like the senate in Australia and the United States or Britain&#8217;s House of Lords.<\/p>\n<p>Goldsmith has previously said both were valid arguments and the government wanted to hear from New Zealanders what they thought during the select committee process.<\/p>\n<p>Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins has said he was in favour of four-year terms as it would allow large projects to be more effectively put in place, and allow them to give more time to the decision making process.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Given the shortness of our parliamentary term, we are very quick to make decisions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think a four-year term would actually allow the government of the day to slow down a bit, and make sure they&#8217;re doing things properly rather than them doing them in a hurry so that they&#8217;ve got something to show at the next election,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/radionz.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=211a938dcf3e634ba2427dde9&amp;id=b3d362e693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith. Photo: RNZ \/ Mark Papalii The government has scrapped plans to put a four-year&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-289910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}