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. It passed in 50 sitting-calendar days. First detected 11 July 2026, 9:19am UTC.
The avenues that remain: petitions to Parliament (including seeking amendment or repeal); consultation on the regulations that often follow an Act, which do carry public submission windows; and the member in charge or your electorate MP on implementation problems — post-passage corrections ride in later amendment bills.
| 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) |
| Second reading | 4 Aug 2026 | The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill was read a second time. source · debate & vote (Hansard) |
| Committee of the whole House | 6 Aug 2026 | The committee stage of the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill was completed. source · debate & vote (Hansard) |
| Third reading | 18 Aug 2026 | The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill was read a third time. 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 | 2 | 4 |
| climate change response | 0 | 3 |
AI-assisted analysis · every claim links to primary source ·
corrections
Published 14 Jul 2026, 7:20pm UTC (separate from, and later than, the alert timestamp above)
· model: claude-opus-4-8
In short: No person, including the Crown, can be held liable in tort for climate change effects caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
“The person has no tort liability for the emissions-related climate change effects.”
“any other proceedings commenced, and not finally determined (including any appeal or rehearing), before the commencement”
“A person is not entitled to compensation of any kind on account of the operation of the amendments made by the amendment Act.”
“tort liability means any liability in tort—”
“This Part applies to activities, related activities, emissions, or effects specified in section 271 regardless of the extent to which”
“This section does not limit Part 8 (no tort liability for emissions-related climate change effects) of the Climate Change Response Act 2002.”
Taken under urgency — it passed in 50 sitting-calendar days; the compressed timetable limited scrutiny even where a committee stage existed.
Method: the model reads the bill as published (claude-opus-4-8); every claim above carries a verbatim span of that text, checked mechanically — claims that fail the check are dropped, not softened. Text analysed from an archived copy of the official text. Full methodology →
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.
