Estimates Debate — Vote Prime Minister and Cabinet

I seek leave to have Vote Communications Security and Intelligence treated separately, in order for the Green Party to cast its vote on that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I will put that now, as a question. The question is that Vote Communications Security and Intelligence stand part of the schedules. All those in favour please say Aye, to the contrary—

No.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The Ayes have it.

A party vote is called for.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The clerk will conduct a party vote.

💬 Jill Pettis: What are we voting on?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): We are voting on Communications Security and Intelligence.

I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I just want clarification. When the Prime Minister left the chair I understood that we would be looking at those votes individually. She has left the chair, and we have moved on to Dr Cullen. That is fine. However, now we are going back, and I thought we would have to seek the leave of the Committee to look at those votes individually. That is what I am asking. We have come back to Vote Communications Security and Intelligence, which is the Prime Minister’s responsibility.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): No, I said in opening that I would put the votes as a block unless there was any objection. Then they would be put one at a time.

Madam Chairperson, you have actually put the votes. We have now moved on. It was only after that that Mr Tanczos asked for his vote to be recorded separately. So he should seek leave to do that.

I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The problem with your ruling is this. You put the votes and only one voice vote was heard in this Chamber. That was the Green member saying no. On that basis they must win that vote.

💬 Dail Jones: That is correct.

That is what happened here. If no one said yes, and one member said no, then that vote, being only one voice, must surely win here.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): As the member knows, it is not a matter of decibels of sound. It is a matter of me calling the vote as I heard it.

Madam Chairperson, you called the vote. You are required to determine where lies the majority. If only one person in a House with 120 members raises his or her voice, that person is the majority. The rest are taken to be in agreement or to have abstained.

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: Silence is compliance.

Yes, come on.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I thank the member. No, the result is not declared on the voices. It is up to me to declare the result.

I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. It is not up to you to determine that at all. That is why we have had a procedure for hundreds of years whereby members vote by a series of mechanisms, but they must do something to have their vote recorded. They cannot do nothing and be assumed to be on either side of the debate or the argument. With respect, it is up to you, regardless of the voices, to determine where the majority lies. With the greatest respect, you are assuming a dictatorial role that is not allowed for by the rules that guide your office and how you should behave. I am saying to you that if only one person intimated his or her vote, therein lies the majority, and it is not up to you to decide otherwise.

I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I refer you to the situation that occurred in 1999 when National had two members in the House, and I think Rodney Hide was representing ACT. He left the House, and the question was put. John Carter, who was the National whip, chased after him in the House, and no one made any call at that particular time. In fact, the Speaker was recalled on this particular issue. It was a confidence matter. The Opposition at that time claimed that because no one had called on that particular vote, then the vote had to go the way that the Opposition had called. As it was, the Chair at the time was Geoff Braybrooke, and he put the vote a second time. David Carter, who was the Minister in the chair, made a call. It was on the basis of David Carter’s call that the Chair then allowed a party vote to be called for. But had that not been the case, it was quite clear at that time that it would have gone in this particular favour. That particular vote was a matter of confidence. I refer back to that incident.

When the Chair or the Speaker is declaring a vote I am sure he or she is judging where the majority lies, in terms of the votes cast. The fact that one member of the Committee even called for a vote to be taken on the matter separately—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, he called on the vote.

Let me finish my sentence or two. He called for a vote to be taken separately on the issue. [Interruption] Yes, the member did. He actually rose on a point of order and sought to take that vote separately from the other votes in this section, and then voted against. The Chair was perfectly in order to assume that the other parties present were voting in favour, and called the vote in favour of the affirmative, particularly on an estimates position where clearly the two Government parties automatically can be assumed to be voting in favour of the motion.

I have been in this House on a number of occasions when people have not voted on their voice—even in the days when there were divisions. It was not necessarily assumed that they were not voting at that point. But if the member wants to take up the estimates time, which is a time-limited debate, with points of order of this sort, then that can certainly happen, but I would have thought the Opposition’s time was better spent on debate.

In respect of what Dr Cullen has said, the Green member called for a party vote in addition to his having voiced his opposition. That is the sequence of events on the chronology. Surely there is no way we can have people saying: “Well, actually, I’ve been here a long time and you can assume what people are going to do next.” That is an amazing statement that Dr Cullen made. You called for the vote, Madam Chair, because it means something. You called for the vote because it is the only way you can measure where the vote might lie, and anything short of that is expeditious nonsense.

Confusion now seems to be developing. It is perfectly appropriate for the member to call for a vote, because the Chair had ruled in favour of the affirmative. As the member had voice voted in favour of the negative, he was perfectly entitled to call for an actual party vote in that case. It would have been inappropriate for a member who had voted with the affirmative to have called for a party vote, because only people who voted against the declaration of what was the majority can call for a party vote following the voice votes.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: There was no voice; that’s the point!

I again point out to the member that people frequently vote on the voices in this House, but the Speaker and the Chair are able to make their own judgments about where the majority lies. The very purpose of calling for such a vote is not just for the fun of having another vote; it is because people are actually questioning whether the Speaker’s judgment was correct in their call. The decisions of the Speaker and the Chair are not final on the basis of the voice vote. If that were so, we would have no procedure for anything before the voice vote, and, indeed, Governments would feel very comfortable in many instances. It would not matter what the numbers were in the House, they would somehow have the numbers on the basis of the voting because all they would have to do is to get a declaration in their favour on the voice vote.

The reality is that there was no voice vote in favour of the Ayes, and there was an Opposition vote in respect of the Noes. That member then asked—and Dr Cullen has got himself into a real fix now—for a party vote and he was denied it. The only thing that possibly can stand now is the “No” vote from the Greens.

The member has not been denied a party vote. We were just in the process of proceeding to a party vote when points of order were raised about the calling of the voice vote.

I do not have a history of purely and simply playing games, but this case does disturb me. Why do we take the voice vote in the first place? The reason why we have a party vote is that purely and simply on the voice, at times, it is impossible for the Chair to decide the numbers, one way or the other, but in this case it was quite clear that there was no vote in favour of the Ayes and there was one vote in favour of the Noes. If, for example, there was a mumbling along the lines that some parties were in favour of the Ayes, I would be quite happy to accept that that would then logically lead to the opportunity for a party vote. However, regardless of the sophistry of Dr Cullen, there was no Ayes vote, and that really is the decision that we have to make. We are not doing it for triviality; we are doing it for the precedent it will set for this House.

There are many occasions in this House where four or five parties vote in one direction and a couple of parties vote in the other direction, but the couple of parties are noisier than the four or five parties voting in favour. The numbers are overwhelming when it comes to the party vote, but on the voices, if one was to go by sheer noise—in this case, one versus nil—it would have been called in favour of the minority. That is not the basis on which the Chair makes the judgment on a voice vote.

While I am obviously sympathetic to the view being put forward by Mr Peters, I am looking at Standing Order 141, which states: “The Speaker asks members to answer ‘Aye’ or ‘No’ to the question and states the result of the voice vote. Any member present may then call for a further vote to be held.” However, Standing Order 142 states: “Where a further vote is called for, a party vote is held unless the subject of the vote is to be treated as a conscience issue.” If I had held my mouth perhaps the point would be correct, but, unfortunately, I actually called for a party vote and it appears to me that under the Standing Orders a party vote is then required to be held.

The point is that the Chair declares the results on the basis of where the Chair considers the majority lies. That is exactly what I did. I declared the result, and a party vote was called for. We are in the process of calling a party vote.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order—

I have ruled on the point of order.

I know that you have attempted to, but I want to get some clarification. You let Dr Cullen speak, after you had said he would the last person to speak. The fact here is that there is no requirement for a party vote if the Chair properly reads the vote that has already been recorded. No one from the Labour Party called for a party vote, nor did anyone else for that matter, but it is because you said that the sole voice vote was lost that he then called for a party vote. He would not have done so if you had said yes. It is axiomatic, for goodness sake. I want to ask you a very simple question: unless you are a soothsayer or a clairvoyant how did you work out the result of that vote, given that only one person said no and no one said yes?

As was said in the discussion, it is up to the Chair to call the vote. As often happens in this House, the people who call for the Ayes can often be louder than or not as loud as the people who call for the Noes.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: No one called for the Ayes; that’s the point.

I say to Mr Peters that I have given a fair bit of latitude in this discussion. I am saying very clearly that it is up to the Chair to declare the result. I am now proceeding with the party vote.

My point goes back to the first point that I made right at the beginning of this debate when we were considering the five votes. You put the motion then—

💬 Hon Dr Michael Cullen: No.

The Minister shakes his head, but it was my understanding that we voted at that time. Following that, however, Mr Tanczos said that he wanted to treat Communications, Security and Intelligence as a separate vote. Now Hansard will record this, and I am sure I am right because that is the point that I brought up originally. It is fine for him then to ask for a separate vote, but in my view he should have sought leave to have the vote taken separately because you had already put the vote on all five. Then Mr Tanczos came forward and wanted that vote treated separately. I am sure that Hansard will support the proposition I have put.

Now I am not saying that that is wrong. I am just saying that that was my understanding and is the reason why I brought that proposition to your attention at the beginning of this debate. National is quite happy for another vote to be taken, if the member wishes to seek leave to do so.

The point is to get exactly right what you did, because what you did was exactly what you are supposed to do as the Chair. That is, you called certain votes one after the other. You explained at the start you would call votes, down to the point where a party seeks to speak on that particular vote, and then up to that point any previous votes are actually put. You had not actually reached the point where any votes had been put, but you proceeded to the second or third on the list, and Mr Tanczos quite properly asked for the vote on Communications, Security and Intelligence to be put separately, which in my view he is entitled to do. It may have been a fraction late, but he sought support for that to happen. It was granted. The vote was put. You declared the voice vote. He has now called for a party vote, and that is the point we are at.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I tell Mr Tisch that that is absolutely correct. I said in the beginning that I would call the votes slowly. If any member wants them put in any other way than the way in which I am calling them, it is up to the member to say so, which is exactly what Mr Tanczos did. I will now put the party vote on Vote Communications, Security and Intelligence.