NZ Parliament

Track bills before the New Zealand Parliament and their progress through the House, from the public bills.parliament.nz JSON API. Keyless, read-only; no login, account, or API key.

Use this when

• A user asks what bills are before Parliament, or to search bills by keyword
• A user wants a bill's status / current stage (first reading, select committee, second reading, royal assent, etc.) and its stage timeline
• A user wants to know who introduced a bill, or government vs member's bills
• A workflow needs machine-readable NZ legislation-in-progress data

Do not use this for

• MP directory, electorates, party lists — not covered (bot-protected source)
• Votes / divisions, Hansard debates, written questions, petitions — not covered
• The full text of enacted law — use legislation.govt.nz
• Government press releases / ministers — use the nz-ministers skill

Commands

cli=skills/nz-parliament/scripts/cli.py

# Current bills before the House
python3 $cli bills
python3 $cli bills --limit 30 --json

# Search bills by keyword (across all bills, not just current)
python3 $cli bills --keyword climate --all
python3 $cli bills -k "firearms" --all --json

# One bill's detail + stage timeline (by bill number or id)
python3 $cli bill 324-1
python3 $cli bill 204-1 --json

Arguments

• bills — -k/--keyword TEXT, --all (include non-current bills), --limit N (1–50, default 20), --page N, --json
• bill <ref> — <ref> is a bill number (e.g. 324-1) or bill id (GUID); --json

Resources

• CLI entrypoint: scripts/cli.py
• Smoke test: scripts/smoke_test.py
• API endpoints, response shapes, and scope: references/api-notes.md

Notes

• Data are live snapshots from bills.parliament.nz.
• The bill list shows the bill type (Government / Member's / Local / Private) but not the sponsoring MP; the sponsoring MP appears in bill detail.
• --json on every command gives machine-readable output for agent chaining.
• Use NZ English in any summaries built from the output (organisation, colour).