New law changes to speed limits were pushed through parliament in a matter of hours yesterday.

Stuff reports that the changes are to validate the tens of thousands of potentially illegal speeding tickets.

Transport Minister Simon Bridges introduced a new law in parliament yesterday. Photo: File.

The tickets have been issued in up to 25 local government areas which may have failed to renew their speed limits from 2004. This means the tickets issued on the roads, other than the open road, for the last 11 years may have been invalid.

But the government has back-dated law changes to ensure no one could mount a legal challenge.

Transport Minister and Tauranga MP Simon Bridges pushed introduced the Land Transport (Speed Limits Validation and Other Matters) Bill, which retrospectively confirmed that local councils and road controlling authorities had the legal power to set speed limits.

The bill removes the requirement for councils to review speed limits five years after they are set, avoiding a repeat of the situation.

It also validates the speed limits set since 2004 and confirms that all enforcement actions taken under those bylaws are valid.

The new law was supported by every party in parliament, ensuring the legislation was passed through under urgency with just two hours of debate.

Bridges says roads that did not have speed limits renewed would have otherwise had 100kmh limits.

He adds that the speed limits people had been following since the expiry of the relevant bylaws set by the local authority were those intended to be in place, and they had been followed and enforced 'in good faith”.

'Indeed, the law they were following is what it should have been, but possibly wasn't,” he said.

Simon did not want 'to get into the blame game” as to whose fault the blunder was, but said the law was clear enough that bylaws were required and needed to be reviewed - which some councils had done.

But a number of laws passed by parliament meant the situation had not been as clear as it could have been, he says.

He denied the situation was embarrassing, but said it was 'unfortunate” and 'in a sense, worrying”.