Legislation: Committees leave raft of executive Bills in limbo

Given the number of Bills still before National Assembly committees when the House rose last Wednesday for the 8 May elections, it is now clear that Parliament’s plan was always to suspend rules that would otherwise have required at an embarrassingly large number of pieces of proposed new legislation to be reintroduced and processed from scratch. In addition to private members’ Bills, the new committees will probably inherit nine others – including the 2018 Prevention of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill and any written submissions received following a call for input last December, notes Pam Saxby for Legalbrief Policy Watch.  Several were introduced well after a deadline possibly imposed as a formality by the institution’s legal services.

As Legalbrief Today has already reported, the 2017 International Crimes Bill was tabled in anticipation of SA’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, a decision apparently under review. The fate of the 2017 Road Accident Benefit Scheme Bill’s ‘B’ version (still on the National Assembly’s order paper for a second reading) will be determined to some extent by the outcome of a DA court application on procedural matters, as Legalbrief Today has also reported.

New MPs will probably cut their teeth on seven other Bills introduced by the executive – most of them last year. They include the 2018 Postal Services Amendment Bill (among other things introducing a new licensing framework to cover services traditionally not provided by the South Africa Post Office); the 2017 Defence Amendment Bill (addressing governance issues and sent back to the National Assembly last week by the NCOP); the 2018 Social Assistance Amendment Bill (among other things establishing an independent tribunal); the 2018 Aquaculture Development Bill (establishing various structures to be tasked with facilitating the sector’s growth); the 2018 National Sport and Recreation Amendment Bill (among other things establishing a sport arbitration tribunal); the 2018 Civil Aviation Amendment Bill (addressing governance issues); and the 2019 Local Government: Municipal Systems Amendment Bill (to replace a 2011 Act that would have given the Minister more powers for tacking mismanagement had the parliamentary procedures followed in passing it not been declared unconstitutional).

Follow Pam Saxby on Twitter (@SaxbyPam)