This Act may be cited as the Legislature Amendment Act 1977, and shall be read together with and deemed part of the Legislature Act 1908 (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act).

Where the House of Representatives resolves that any Bill, petition, or other business before it or any of its committees be carried over to the next succeeding session of Parliament (whether the same Parliament or not), that Bill, petition, or other business shall not lapse upon the prorogation or dissolution or expiration by effluxion of time of the Parliament in being when that resolution is passed but shall be carried over accordingly.

Where any resolution under subsection (1) of this section enables the business to which it relates to survive a dissolution of Parliament, the House of Representatives may provide, by that resolution or by any subsequent resolution passed in the same session, for that business to be continued while Parliament is not in session following that dissolution by a committee comprising members of the House of Representatives, and may—

Every such committee shall have, subject to the terms of any resolution under subsection (2) of this section, the privileges, immunities, and powers of a Select Committee of the House of Representatives, and shall be deemed to be a committee of the House of Representatives—

A member of the House of Representatives who has not taken and subscribed the oath required by section 46 of the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 may sit and may vote as a member of a committee constituted by or pursuant to a resolution under subsection (2) of this section.

An Act resulting from the passing, whether before or after the commencement of this Act, of a Bill carried forward, whether before or after the commencement of this Act, from one session of Parliament to another or from successive sessions of Parliament, and anything done under any such Act, whether before or after the commencement of this Act, shall be as valid and effective as if the introduction and passing of the Bill, and all other proceedings of the House of Representatives and of any committee in relation to it, had taken place within one session.