This bill amends the Climate Change Response Act 2002 to create a statutory bar on tort liability for emissions-related climate change effects.
This bill has been accorded urgency in the House, with referral to a select committee. First detected 11 July 2026, 9:19am UTC.
Urgency compresses the timetable, not the politics. Until the third reading, the committee of the whole House can still amend the bill — changes are moved right up to the final vote. The channels that operate at this speed:
| Stage | Sitting day | Record |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 30 Jun 2026 | Introduction of bills: Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill source · debate & vote (Hansard) |
| First reading | 30 Jun 2026 | The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill was read a first time and referred to the Justice Committee, to be reported to the House by 30 July 2026. The committee has authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196. source · debate & vote (Hansard) |
Dates are sitting days as recorded by the Office of the Clerk; a sitting extended under urgency continues under its original day. Readings are decided by party vote: each party casts its members’ votes en bloc (proxies included), so the whole House needn’t be present and individual attendance isn’t recorded — the party-by-party tally for each reading is in that day’s Hansard, linked per stage above.
Members who took a call in this bill’s debates, from our Hansard corpus. Under urgency several bills are often debated together (a “cognate” debate), so speakers may be addressing the group of bills.
Topics in the OpenBrief corpus matched to this bill’s title, with their volume over the last six weeks — how loud the subject already was when urgency was moved. This is retrieval against our existing corpus, not model judgement.
| Topic | Press items · 6wk | Social posts · 6wk |
|---|---|---|
| climate change research | 1 | 46 |
| climate change response | 3 | 6 |
Analysis pending. The alert above is automated and factual. A deeper, provenance-anchored analysis — what the bill actually changes, clause by clause — publishes separately when it is correct, not when it is quick. Its publication timestamp will be shown distinctly from the alert timestamp above.
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A motion to accord urgency to the following business was agreed to: - the remaining stages of: - the Antisocial Road Use Legislation Amendment Bill; - the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill; - the Offshore Renewable Energy Bill; - the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill; and - the Regulatory Systems (Primary Industries) Amendment Bill; - the first reading and referral to a select committee of: - the Building Amendment Bill; and - the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill; - the second reading of: - the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill; - the Crimes Amendment Bill; - the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill; - the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Amendment Bill; and - the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) (3 Day Postnatal Stay) Amendment Bill; - the first reading and referral to a select committee of: - the Community Magistrates Legislation Amendment Bill; and - the Environmental Reporting Amendment Bill; - the second reading of: - the Building (Earthquake-prone Buildings) Amendment Bill; and - the Emergency Management Bill (No 2); - the first reading and referral to a select committee of the Regulatory Systems (Social Security) Amendment Bill (No 2); - the discharge and re-committal to a select committee of the Regulatory Systems (Courts) Amendment Bill; and - the remaining stages of: - the Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Occupational Regulation) Amendment Bill; - the Mental Health Bill; - the Plain Language Act Repeal Bill; and - the Constitution Amendment Bill.