The House: Parliament delivers heralds of the 2026 election

Parliament is a seasonal creature with daily, weekly and annual patterns. Like nature, its events have predictable rhythms and within that flow, known harbingers announce the arrival of major occasions.

This week, two separate moments heralded next year's election. First came the arrival of the proposed sitting calendar for 2026.

The first omen: Hints in a sitting calendar?

Sitting calendars are devised by the Leader of the House (Chris Bishop), agreed by the Business Committee and approved by the House (typically in its final sitting week).

They are usually a simple annual sign, foreshadowing the year's approaching end, and promising another to come. Unusually, this calendar hints at when the election might be.

Note: Election year sitting calendars are like those for any other year.

They lay out sitting days with no gap for an election, as if one won't happen. Parliament's inevitable rise and dissolution are not planned, but come regardless.

The 2026 calendar begins like 2024 and 2025, give or take the influence of wandering holidays like Easter. Again, it includes an absurd single week at the end of January that seems to say "see we're back at work already too" before taking a week's breather for Waitangi Day.

The 2026 calendar has borrowed sitting weeks from the later months and moved them earlier into the year, as if the government has tried to cram in every week it can before it must rise for an uncertain vote.

The pattern suggests the House might rise a week before the end of September, which (with dissolution at September's end), would place an election a week into November, on the 7th.

It's not at all certain, just a subtle hint, but if you're picking a date in a sweepstake, it seems like a worthy guess.

The second omen: The Standing Orders Review begins in earnest

The first omen is but a fancy. The second is important - the Standing Orders Review.

Every three years, as Parliament winds down, it begins to think about what might need adjusting in its own rules, known as the Standing Orders.

Any changes only apply to the Parliament. As a result, sometimes the most useful adjustments happen when the coming election is uncertain (so no major party has a clear sense of which rules might be most useful to its own position).

The committee that manages this triennial review of the rules is the Standing Orders Committee.

This week, the Standing Orders Committee, chaired by the Speaker, held their first public hearing of submissions on what might change. The very first submitter was the Clerk of the House of Representatives, David Wilson. He leads Parliament's secretariat, peopled with experts on the rules and processes, who deal daily with their implications.

The Clerk is by no means the only submitter, just the first one. On Wednesday, the Parliamentary Counsel's Office (which drafts government legislation) followed, as did the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton.

There are many more submitters to come and a lot of really interesting and innovative ideas from organisations, political parties, academics, NGOs and individuals.

There are recurring themes, the most dominant of these is probably reining in the overuse of Parliamentary Urgency, including skipping or curtailing the Select Committees process.

Ideas to curb urgency include automatic expiry dates for laws passed without full process, governments needing to convince the Speaker that urgency is necessary, and select committees undertaking post-hoc reviews of laws that bypass them.

There are numerous suggestions for Select Committee reforms, including for their number, size, make-up, chairmanship and rules. Another theme this year is ways to manage the overwhelming avalanche of public submissions.

There are also numerous ideas for improving formal scrutiny of government, including suggestions from both government and opposition MPs regarding making sure Ministers participate fully.

There are also suggestions for genuinely integrating tikanga Māori into Parliament's rules and processes. There are also ideas regarding the selection of, and powers of the Speaker; community outreach, citizens assemblies, public contributions to question time, and so many more.

There is a lot to read and think about in the written submissions and the oral ones to come.

Links to further information

You can read the many written submissions on the current review here.

You can find archived and live streams of Select Committee hearings here.

The current Standing Orders are here.

The most recent Standing Orders changes (from the 53rd Parliament) are here.

A manual explaining Parliament's rules and practice can be found here.

Photos from the first hearing

Select Committees are generally not as combative as the House. They can operate in a surprisingly congenial and cooperative way, if well led.

The Standing Orders Committee is an example of this. The MPs on this committee tend to genuinely care about how Parliament operates and all want it to function well.

*RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.