The bill amends the Bail Act 2000 (section 30M and new sections) to clarify that a court may authorise electronic monitoring assessors to approve a defendant's absences from their EM address for purposes the court has set. It codifies a long-standing operational practice and validates existing conditions.
Parliament advanced this bill under urgency (committee of whole house, first reading, second reading, third reading) — moving it through faster than usual, with less time than normal for public submissions.
These are claims MPs made in Parliament’s debate — not verified facts.
This bill amends the Bail Act 2000, which governs when people awaiting trial can be released on bail. Some defendants are placed on electronically monitored (EM) bail, meaning an ankle bracelet checks that they stay at an approved address. In practice, Corrections-based "EM assessors" have long approved short absences — for example to collect children, attend appointments or go to work — but the law did not clearly authorise this, technically requiring a judge to sign off on each and every absence. The bill lets a court authorise EM assessors to approve absences for purposes the court has set, and confirms the validity of approvals already made under the existing practice.
It is a Government bill. Supporters say it simply aligns the law with a sensible, decade-old practice and avoids an unworkable flood of individual court approvals for roughly 2,000 monitored defendants. Critics raised concerns about confirming past decisions retrospectively, about limited consultation — including with Māori, who are over-represented in the justice system — and about whether the drafting fully achieves its aim.
See the Parliament.nz ↗ site for the full bill.