Naming and Suspension of Member

I name the member. The question is, That Rodney Hide be suspended from the service of the House.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. On behalf of the National Opposition, at least, I express our disappointment at the activity that has just taken place, particularly the quite quick decision to expel Mr Hide from the House. Today we have seen the Minister of Finance, the acting Prime Minister, stand in this House and be required to withdraw and apologise on three occasions. I think that lends some weight to the argument that the Opposition has a right to be frustrated. Although we can pick up newspapers—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member had better make his point tersely, as required by the Standing Order.

I am. Although we can pick up newspapers, listen to the radio, and watch television, and see and hear contradictory positions from the Government on the issue relating to the foreshore and seabed, we cannot come into this House and get a clear answer. We will not be asking any further questions on this matter today; we will revisit it at another time. But I tend to agree with Mr Hide: it is a bit of a waste of time.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Let me just say this to the member. I did not suspend the member for any reason other than his disobeying the instruction of the Chair. I did not want to name the member—I do not ever like naming any member in this House. I asked him to be seated, and to cease interjecting, and he did not. I gave him a second chance; he did not. I gave him a third chance, and at that point I did name him. As far as the quality of the answer was concerned, or anything like that, that was not the issue on this occasion. I said that the Minister had addressed the question, and that is it.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to ask you to go away and reflect over the weekend on what has happened this week, because this member is the second member who has been named. It is always to do with frustration over the same issue, which is our not getting an answer. When Opposition members raise points of order, you are very quick to stand on your feet midway through the point of order, and sit them down—we saw that in the last case, and we saw it just before, with Mr Brownlee, as well. In the last few weeks I cannot remember a time when you have ever asked Government Ministers to sit down when they are raising a point of order—you hear them out. I put it to you that you are in danger of being seen to apply different standards when telling people to sit down before they have made their point of order. You anticipate what is going to be said by the Opposition, and I have not yet seen you do that with the Government.

Mr Speaker, the reason that you do not do that is that Government members of Parliament do not raise points of order that are simply debating material. Mr Brownlee entered into a long debating speech, and he got a long way through it. We on the Government side sometimes think you should intervene earlier. It is the nature of Parliament that those tend to be the views of the Government and of the Opposition.

This matter arose simply because a member who quoted an answer given yesterday in the House got the answer: “I didn’t say that.”, and then you said that the Minister had answered the question. How he could have done that, having denied that he had made the quote in the first place, is beyond me. From my point of view, my party is looking very hard at the question of whether we should elect a new Speaker and get some straight-out neutrality in this House.

I expelled Mr Hide because he started out by saying: “I do want to challenge your ruling …”. That is automatically out of order in this House. I try to be fair to everyone. When I count up the number of points of order that are raised—and I am happy to do that over the weekend—and announce the result to members, they will find that the vast majority of points of order are raised by Opposition members. That is to be expected, but most of them are political points; they are not points of order.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I cannot let that go, in the sense that an Opposition member raising a point of order is our only avenue to try to get a Minister to give an answer. You yourself know that I have spoken to you outside this Chamber on the fact that the Opposition, to get a Minister to address a question, has to raise a point of order to get you to ask the Minister to address the question. I have appealed to you several times to intervene on Ministers before we raise points of order. For you then to stand up and say that you will count the points of order over the weekend, and that will show that the Opposition raises too many, is not right. We will not raise points of order if the Chair is proactive during question time in making Ministers answer.

We are getting back to the stage where the Opposition is starting to threaten you in one way or another. That was an explicit threat from a previous speaker. The issue here is very simple. Members opposite seem to demand the answer they want, not the answer they get. Today we had a question where the Minister was not quoted; the question actually went a good deal further than what the Minister had said. Members are complaining that the Minister said he did not say it. Well, he did not say it. I listened very carefully, both to the Hansard quotation and to the question, and the two were not the same. Your job is to ensure that a Minister addresses the question, not satisfies the desire of members opposite for the answer they want.

The only comment I would make to Mr Sowry is that twice today, before any point of order, I intervened and insisted that the Minister answer, and he acknowledges that point. I will endeavour to do that in the future.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. While you are reflecting on this over the weekend, I ask that you consider a matter that was raised 2 or 3 weeks ago, and that is the possibility that where members are, in effect, urging you to require that a question be answered, and where you judge that the question may have been evaded, or that there is reason for Opposition concern, you might indicate that another question will be allowed. It would be a help to us. You have indicated the possibility, at times, but we do not know when you might grant another question. If you were to indicate that another question will be allowed, then it would be easier for us to accept that the Chair does not have the capacity to force an answer out of the Minister.

I ruled on that, and in fact I will ask the Clerk to give the member the copy of my rather extensive ruling on that very matter, just recently.

Question time resumed.