A bill can be most of the way through Parliament when an election arrives. Some survive the interruption. Some quietly die and have to start from the beginning.
Making a law is slow on purpose. A bill is introduced, argued over, sent to a select committee where the public can make submissions, read again, voted on, and finally signed off.
That process can easily take longer than the gap between elections. So what happens to a half-finished law when an election turns up?
When Parliament is dissolved, everything it was working on stops. Bills that have not finished lapse - they do not become law, and they do not sit patiently where they were.
The new Parliament can pick a lapsed bill back up and carry on from the stage it had reached, rather than starting again from nothing, but that only happens if the new Parliament decides to do it. And the new Parliament may be a different shape, with different parties in charge, in which case a bill somebody worked on for two years simply stops existing.
I keep thinking about the submissions. If hundreds of people wrote to a select committee about a bill - people who had strong reasons, who took the time - and that bill lapses, all of that effort sits in a file that may never be opened again.
That is not a scandal. It is what it costs to let voters change their minds. A Parliament we elected in the past should not be able to bind a Parliament we elect in the future.
But it does mean an election is a deadline for everything, all at once. Which is part of why the months before one are so busy, and why some bills get pushed through faster than the people who wrote them would like.
Question for the reader
Suppose a bill has had thousands of submissions and is one vote away from becoming law when Parliament is dissolved. Should the new Parliament have to consider it, or be free to drop it without a word?
Making it compulsory respects everyone's work. Making it optional respects the election result. You cannot fully have both. Which do you weight more heavily, and does your answer change depending on whether you agreed with the bill?