I Parsed All 241,456 Amendments in New Zealand's Statute Book

The research notes said New Zealand's legislation XML records its amendment history in machine-readable attributes, and I built my first parser against them, and they do not exist. Not "exist but renamed". Not "exist in some files". Zero occurrences, in any file, in either version of the official schema. The actual history lives in little <history-note> blocks of nearly plain English, with dates written out like "2 July 2001" and the amending act named by title only, no ID, like a Parliament that never expected anyone to check. Day one of the build, and the map I'd been handed described a country that wasn't there. It felt appropriate. Some background if you're just arriving: Part 1 counted what cancelled projects cost (well over a billion dollars sunk from one change of government). Part 2 argued the cause is structural, a three-year clock on a Parliament with no speed bumps. Both of those leaned on other people's receipts: journalists, Treasury papers, OIA responses. This post is…