This bill amends the Crimes Act 1961 to strengthen consequences for certain crimes and meet commitments in the National/New Zealand First coalition agreement.
This bill has been accorded urgency in the House. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Second reading | 30 Jun 2026 | The Crimes Amendment Bill was read a second time. source · debate & vote (Hansard) |
| Committee of the whole House | 29 Jul 2026 | The committee stage of the Crimes Amendment Bill was completed. source · debate & vote (Hansard) |
| Third reading | 6 Aug 2026 | The Crimes 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 |
|---|---|---|
| crimes act amendments | 3 | 4 |
AI-assisted analysis · every claim links to primary source ·
corrections
Published 14 Jul 2026, 7:21am UTC (separate from, and later than, the alert timestamp above)
· model: claude-opus-4-8
In short: Extends citizen's arrest to any Crimes Act offence, raises trafficking/slavery penalties, and creates new offences for coward punches, assaults on first responders, and low-value theft.
“In section 35(a), delete “for which the maximum punishment is not less than 3 years’ imprisonment”.”
“must, as soon as practicable, make contact with the Police and follow all directions given by the Police in relation to the arrested person, including any direction to—”
“A person who commits an offence against subsection (1) is liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 15 years.”
“In section 98(1), replace “14 years” with “20 years or a fine not exceeding $500,000 (or both)”.”
“the Attorney-General’s consent is not required for proceedings to be brought in relation to an offence against section 98D if all the acts and omissions alleged to constitute the offence, and every event necessary to the completion of the alleged offence, occurred wholly inside New Zealand.”
“Proceedings under this section must not be brought or continued against any constable in respect of any act committed by them at a time or during a period when they are acting as an undercover officer, except with the leave of the Attorney-General.”
“In section 52(1), delete “, if in either case he or she does not strike or do bodily harm to the trespasser”.”
Taken under urgency; 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.
