Sorry I didn't get back to you before. I only just got home from work, we finished early mainly because rain earlier meant we didn't have much work.

If an idea comes out, is "mooted", it is advertised that there is a Bill in existance to make legislation on something that interests you, there is always a "submission process". Quite often they will say that they only want submissions from "stakeholders" (private companies and government departments who have a vested interest in the legislation that is being proposed) but they always have to take notice of PUBLIC submissions. This is supposed to be part of the democratic process. Officially we have a "participatory democracy", meaning that we not only vote for the representative we want in parliament but we supposedly get to comment on proposed legislation too. Although I fear that in practise that is not always the way it works. Parliament takes notice of "stakeholders" and lobby groups but hardly ever takes notice of the public.

If a Bill is "in the pipeline" you will get to hear about it by listening to the parliamentary session or by reading the news. A date is always given of when submissions "close" on a particular Bill.

I always keep my eye on the news these days in case I miss something important. I learned a valuable lesson in 1998 with the "land transport Bill". There was hardly any publicity about this impending legislation and all of a sudden it was advertised that submissions closed on 31 January 1998 - that gave anybody about two weeks to write a submission and it was over the Christmas holiday period (parliament is full of little tricks like this). I think they demanded something like twenty-five copies of submissions at the time (although the usual is about two copies) and so I rushed to do it only to find that it "had not been accepted" and was not even mentioned in documents I later gained through the official information act about the process for this Bill. Then I also found out how important it is to have ALL the relevant documentation with regard to a Bill "at your fingertips" when you're making a submission. Because we all "submitted" on a document called the "yellow draft" and then found out that a new previously unheard of document - the "green draft" was passed into legislation.

I used to assume that everybody knew how we had been "ripped off" so badly as a nation by this fiasco, but I have only recently found out how few people know anything about this. So I'll tell you how things can turn out and why I have absolutely no trust in parlaiment or the judicial process. A fellow "submitter" on the Bill, Lois McInness, sought a judicial review of the digi-licence scheme on the grounds that it had not been passed into law on a proper constitutional basis.

Despite agreeing with McInnes that former Transport Minister Maurice Williamson had indeed "acted unlawfully", Justice McGechan refused to overturn the scheme on the basis it would cause "chaos and mayhem".

I just think we all have to be very aware that these things can happen (and that Maurice Williamson is STILL in parliament) and try and make sure that they don't ever happen again.

Anyway, I digress (very badly digress actually) and all you wanted to know was about making submissions.

You can make either a written or oral submission.

If it is an oral submission (and you are prepared to be at parliament buildings to speak if you are called upon) committee staff will inform you of the time and place of the meeting and the time allocated for your submission. Notification may be at short notice. This is also if you want to speak to reinforce what you have said in a written submission.

Otherwise a "submission" is just a paper setting out what you believe should happen (much like writing a post to this forum I guess).

You must have a heading, who it is from, set everything out clearly (remember the clerk of the house is usually not too bright, so try to use as many words of one syllable as possible).

You can send your submission by email (the address would be specific to the committee, so you'd have to look that up) or post it to (now I hope I've got the address right - parliament will use any excuse to ignore submissions):

Clerk of the Committee
(What ever Bill) Select Committee
Select Committee Office
Freepost Parliament Buildings
WELLINGTON

Hey, amazing, my son just "wanted to use the computer for a minute to check 'Trademe'" and then left the page open at my "links" and I saw this (it far better explains things than my rambling - although my words are far more entertaining than this):

New Zealand Parliament - How to make a submission

So brilliant! Start writing.