A four-year parliamentary term for New Zealand?

In 2025, the New Zealand Government introduced a Bill proposing to extend the country’s maximum parliamentary term from three to four years. Dr Edward Willis explores how this seemingly modest change cuts to the core of New Zealand’s uncodified, majoritarian constitutional system—one that relies on frequent elections as its primary safeguard against executive dominance. He examines how the reform tests the balance between effective governance and democratic accountability, the adequacy of proposed procedural checks, and the enduring tension between pragmatic reform and constitutional principle as the measure moves toward a national referendum.

In a move that could redefine New Zealand’s democratic cycle, the government this year introduced the Term of Parliament (Enabling 4-Year Term) Legislation Amendment Bill, seeking to extend the maximum parliamentary term from three to four years. Now progressing to its second reading, the Bill, if approved, will go to the public for a national referendum.

New Zealand Unusual Constitutional Framework

New Zealand has a Westminster-style parliamentary government, with the electoral cycle dictated by a maximum parliamentary term currently set at three years. This is relatively short by international standards, especially among Westminster-influenced systems, but reflects a profound and distinctive political commitment in New Zealand to a strong form of representative democracy. The highly representative nature of New Zealand’s democracy is, in turn, essential both to legitimating constitutional government and providing for meaningful political accountability.

New Zealand lacks many of the constraints on political authority that are commonplace among mature liberal democracies.

New Zealand lacks many of the constraints on political authority that are commonplace among mature liberal democracies. There is no written, codified constitution to serve as a unifying expression of basic principles and ideals of constitutional government. While some statutes do superficially take on a constitutional form (most notably the Constitution Act 1986), it is well understood that such legislation does not operate as either fundamental law or higher order law. New Zealand is a unitary state without different sites of federated governmental authority. As is usual for parliamentary systems, Ministers are drawn from the membership of Parliament, and so there is a lack of any formal separation between the executive and legislative branches of government. Parliament itself is a unicameral legislature which regularly indulges in truncated ‘urgent’ legislative procedures, evidencing few meaningful internal checks on the use of law-making authority. And an ongoing commitment to a relatively absolutist version of parliamentary sovereignty means that the courts do not generally have power to invalidate legislation on constitutional grounds.

The few genuine constitutional checks on political authority that do exist tend to be highly contingent. The rule of law and independence of the judiciary have been described as “vulnerable” because of a lack of public understanding of these concepts and a preference for strong government. Legislative self-entrenchment has been used only sparingly. Rights protection instruments take effect subject to legislative override. Integrity institutions source their authority on a contingent basis in the absence of a written constitution. Collectively, these features are not of a kind that we would usually associate with a functioning constitutional democracy.

(...) New Zealand’s claim to genuinely constitutional government hangs almost entirely on its electoral system.

The alleviating factor in all of this is the highly representative nature of New Zealand’s electoral system. With the move to a system of proportional representation in 1996, New Zealand has led the world in terms of exemplifying a constitutional model where political power is held to account directly and effectively via the democratic mechanism of electoral politics rather than a more Madisonian approach of institutionalising formal ‘checks and balances’. Indeed, New Zealand’s claim to genuinely constitutional government hangs almost entirely on its electoral system. While free and fair elections are an essential feature of all modern democracies, New Zealand’s reliance on representative democracy to legitimate constitutional government means that elections must also be frequent. This ensures both that unpopular or ineffective politicians can be replaced efficiently (or at least to ensure that the pressure on the nation’s political leadership to deliver on the voting public’s expectations does not abate), and that Parliament effectively and meaningfully represents the changing views of the electorate over time as its own membership changes in response to evolving voting patterns.

The Proposed Reform and Its Implications

All of this is critical context for the proposed reform to extend the maximum parliamentary term to four years. While in many respects a small change, its impact is potentially significant because it directly cuts against the grain of New Zealand’s prevailing constitutional arrangements. A three-year maximum term has been found to strike the appropriate balance when two previous reforms to extend it were voted down in public referendums in 1967 and 1990, and it preserves the electoral system’s highly representative nature.

The apparent view is that a mere three years does not allow a government sufficient time to undertake serious policy initiatives (...).

Why, then, the push for change? The political class has apparently reached its own consensus across ideological lines that a three-year term is too short. The apparent view is that a mere three years does not allow a government sufficient time to undertake serious policy initiatives because of the frequent need to divert resources to “bedding in” personnel and a policy agenda following an election and then preparing to contest the next electoral ballot. This rationale is entirely anecdotal and speculative rather than evidence-based, particularly as the reform is being pursued in the absence of broad-based public consultation. New Zealand has a history of developing complex taxation and environmental protection reform across different parliamentary terms and despite an intervening change of government, for example. Further, there is very little empirical evidence from the comparative political science literature on the effectiveness of extending the electoral cycle. What little evidence there does not point to a clear “right answer”.

For instance, shorter terms tend to promote more government accountability in a raw sense, although they can also lead to greater ideological capture and extremism as politicians target swing voters. This may be harmful to rather than conducive of democratic government. Shorter terms can also  discourage legislative effort, and longer terms promote more active legislative behaviour, but not because of electoral distractions as New Zealand’s political class might have it. Instead, this phenomenon seems to be based on specific payback logic, with longer terms allowing politicians to enjoy political credit for their legislative efforts for a longer period of time. Longer terms are often not fully realised in any case, because governments in multiparty systems often do not survive for a full term. This seems to undermine the benefits claimed by proponents of a longer term in New Zealand. Further, there is evidence of strategic behaviour with longer terms whereby elections tend to be called early when economic conditions are favourable, for example, which only reduces political accountability.

All this is to say, the case for the proposed reform is murky at best. Ideally, such a significant constitutional issue would have sought deep public engagement and buy-in, but this has not yet occurred.  

An Attempt at Procedural Balance

The proposed reform, as initially presented, acknowledged the potential to undermine political accountability to some extent, and sought to redress that albeit in an incredibly cumbersome and confusing way. Following a general election, the original draft of the bill proposed that a three-year parliamentary term would prevail unless the incoming government officially confirmed that the overall membership of the parliamentary select committees was proportional to the non-executive membership of the House of Representatives.  This mechanism would have the intended effect of increasing opposition representation on these committees, which perform the important functions of assessing legislative proposals and scrutinising government performance. The Justice Select Committee ultimately recommended removing this provision, which it considered too complex and likely to create instability, uncertainty, and confusion for voters, and replacing it with a straightforward maximum four-year term.  

At one level, this aspect of the proposal made some sense. It sought to maintain New Zealand’s support of political constitutionalism rather than invoking legalistic devices like, say, judicial supervision. But this procedural mechanism does not really go far enough to counterbalance the increase in political power that governments will enjoy under an extended parliamentary term. In the first place, it is an exceedingly modest proposal given the lack of other institutional checks and balances common to other democracies, as described above. In any case, the proportionality requirement is unlikely to be effective on its own terms. It is a long‑standing feature of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements that Parliament determines its own procedures and practices, including in respect of select committee membership. Under Parliament’s Standing Orders, the effectiveness of select committee processes is ultimately subject to ongoing support by a parliamentary majority that is likely to vote in accordance with the wishes of the government of the day. The credibility of the proportionality requirement therefore rests on Government members not cynically misusing their power to set parliamentary procedures in their own favour. Again, in light of the lack of other meaningful checks, this is far from guaranteed. It is no real surprise, therefore, that the Justice Select Committee suggested removing the proportionality requirement.

Public Legitimacy and Constitutional Change

The proposed legislation is still to go through its second and third readings, be debated in the House, and receive formal assent. The proportionality requirement may be reinstated as part of that process, and indeed other changes could be made. Once passed in Parliament, the success of the proposed reform will turn on the degree of popular support it receives. The maximum length of the parliamentary term is subject to a particular form of statutory entrenchment, and so can only be amended or repealed by a super-majority in Parliament or if endorsed by popular referendum. Given the subject matter of the reform affects Parliament directly, it is arguable that a super-majority vote in Parliament is insufficient when measured against constitutional norms, and therefore constitutionally necessary to secure public endorsement via a referendum. This reaffirms that constituent authority ultimately lies with the people rather than Parliament and avoids the spectre of self-interest. It is the most constitutionally appropriate course, and thankfully is something that proponents of the reform seem to have accepted.

(...) [T]his proposed reform is the product of political agreement rather than a popular groundswell of opinion, and public engagement to date has not been meaningful.

Whether the necessary popular support will be forthcoming remains to be seen. New Zealanders are famously indifferent towards deep questions of constitutionalism, preferring a pragmatic, ad hoc and incremental approach to reform. As a former New Zealand Governor‑General has put it, “constitutional change in New Zealand is often the result of a pragmatic and practical response to events” rather than considered deliberate reform. As mentioned, this proposed reform is the product of political agreement rather than a popular groundswell of opinion, and public engagement to date has not been meaningful. This tends to suggest that the voting public may reject the proposed reform once again.

But referendums also have a way tendency to surprise. While it is disappointing that the reform is proceeding when the constitutional case for the proposals simply has not been made in credible terms to the public, only time will tell how the majority of citizens feel about the issue. More effective government is something virtually everyone can agree on, and the rhetoric of achieving that goal may be enough to see the long-held dream of the political class of a four-year maximum term become a reality.  

Dr Edward Willis is an Associate Professor at the University of Otago’s Faculty of Law. He researches broadly in the field of public law and has a particular interest in the theory and practice of unwritten constitutions.

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Suggested citation: Edward Willis, ‘A four-year parliamentary term for New Zealand?’, ConstitutionNet, International IDEA, 7 October 2025, https://constitutionnet.org/news/voices/four-year-parliamentary-term-new-zealand

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