Points of Order — Replies to Written Questions—Adequacy

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Members have raised this issue before, but I believe it is worthy of taking some of the time of the House. It relates to the difficulty the Opposition parties are having in getting answers from Ministers to parliamentary questions.

In particular, ACT has been trying for some months, with dozens of parliamentary questions to the Minister of Health, Annette King, to find out about what simply used to be the health waiting list. The health waiting list has been divided into three different queues. ACT and the National Party have been asking questions about that, and we have received answers from the Minister of Health referring us to the Ministry of Health’s website. That is OK—we are computer literate—but when we have gone to the Ministry of Health’s website, we have not found the answers to our questions, at all. We have continued, from last year through to this year, to ask questions about the numbers in the new category called GP Care—those people who have been taken off the list and sent back to their doctor. The Minister could not answer those questions because she was away or she was sick. Finally, we got an answer that said the information was publicly available from the department.

Well, we tried to get it from the department. We went to the Ministry of Health’s website and we could not find it. We went off to the Parliamentary Library—Annette King is nodding her head because I think she knows about this problem—and staff members there looked on the website. They could not find it, either, so they approached the department. The department said that, no, that information is not publicly available and is not on the website —Annette King is agreeing with me on this—

💬 Hon Annette King: No, I’m not.

She is not!

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Would the member please come to the point of order.

I would—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Please come to the point of order.

It is this: the Parliamentary Library, following Annette King’s answers to us in Parliament, went to the Ministry of Health, which gave back the most extraordinary answer. It said that, yes, it had the information, but that it needed the Minister’s permission to release it. That was at the end of months of trying.

It is not just a case of my writing to you, Mr Speaker, or to the Minister of Health; it is a systemic problem that we have with this Government when we ask simple questions. First, the Government takes a long time to answer; second, when it gives the answer it is not an answer; third, when we follow up on an answer that tells us to go to a particular web page, we find that the information is not there; and, fourth, the Government tells us that the information is publicly available, but, finally, the department responds and says that, no, it is not publicly available. This is a trashing of Parliament and a trashing of accountability. I will be writing to you, Mr Speaker, about this, but I want you to appreciate how frustrating it is for our Parliament, and how much it brings it into disgrace, if simple answers cannot be given to simple questions. Instead, we get nothing but the run-around. I know that every party in this Parliament, outside the Government, feels the same way.

The member raises a matter that can, and should, be dealt with in a more appropriate manner. If he has a specific complaint, he should write to the Minister concerned, or to you, Mr Speaker, in terms of the process of written questions through the House. This is simply not the right place or time to bring this up.

I would contend that this is the proper place to bring this issue up, in accordance with Speaker’s ruling 149/4(1). To add to Mr Hide’s concerns, can I say that I know that three senior members of the National Party have raised in recent weeks issues around answers to written questions. Answers include such examples as: “The department does not hold this information in the form requested.”, “Data matching would provide only a snapshot.”, “Information is available from annual reports.”, and “Collating information would require a significant resource and management of data, which I am unwilling to make.” To support Mr Hide, I say that the question is really that those are not isolated, one-off examples. What avenues, beyond a letter to you on specific examples, are available to parties on this side of the House to deal with this wider trend?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Whenever I have been approached by any member, in writing, I have taken the matter up immediately. I think members who have done so will recognise that. Mr Hide says that he will write to me. I will wait for his letter. What the library was told by a department is not a matter for me. I point out that there are over 20,000 written questions per year. I can remember that, when I first came to the House, there were about 500 or 600—[Interruption] Order! Not while I am on my feet! Neither interjection was appropriate. Since the score was one all, I will ignore them. It is inevitable that not all questions will be satisfactorily answered, but I say to members that if they write to me, I guarantee to look at the matter immediately, because I believe that answers should be given, where appropriate, in the proper form.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member who raised the most recent point of order quoted Speaker’s ruling 149/4(1). I draw his attention to 149/4(2), which states that “the member should discuss the matter initially with the Minister to try to correct the answer”, and so on. Again, that does not appear to have been done. So this is not the time or place to raise this matter; this matter should be raised with the appropriate Minister.

Mr Speaker, in addition to your writing or talking to a Minister about this problem, has it ever occurred to you, as Speaker, that it would be appropriate to advise the Prime Minister of the problems that we are confronting here? Because, frankly, if a Minister cannot do his or her job, that Minister should be fired. One of the regulating mechanisms that operates in any decent democracy is that if a Minister is seen to be found wanting, and if that Minister is found wanting in this House, then usually that Minister goes—excepting in our Parliament, in 2004, they stay here.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: All I can say to the member is that when I feel the need to approach the leader of the Government on an issue, of course I will do so, because it may be appropriate to do so. It is not always the case, but I use my judgment in this matter. But I can assure members that whenever anyone has written to me, or come to see me, I have endeavoured to act on it immediately.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like you to confirm one of your own rulings, which you might find easy to do. Speaker’s ruling 148/2 states: “Anyone giving inaccurate information in a written reply should clear up the error as soon as he or she realises it has occurred.” I say to you that if the situation is that—and I am sure it is, as that is how it has been given by my leader—an answer has been given by the Minister of Health saying that information is publicly available, but, in fact, the Ministry of Health says that, yes, the information does exist but it is not publicly available, then the answer was an error. That would be a matter that can be cleared up only by the Minister of Health rising in this House and apologising for having given such an answer. It is my understanding that a series of answers to written questions have been given by Ministers saying that information is readily available in annual reports. Many of those annual reports have not even been presented. Those answers are an error, and those Ministers should all rise and apologise, under your own ruling.

Well, I confirm my previous ruling. I read it just then, and it was one of those occasions when I thought I had made quite a good ruling—and, certainly, it was very appropriate to the situation. It is for a Minister to judge whether he or she got the answer wrong, and then to take the appropriate steps. I am not the quizmaster; I am merely the referee.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just want to respond very briefly to the Hon Mark Burton’s point.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Is this a point of order, or a response?

Yes, it is.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: What is the point of order?

My point of order is this. I agree with the Hon Mark Burton that, in the normal course of events, one would write straight to the Minister. But the difficulty that we have is that we have had a whole, systemic series of answers that are half-answers. It is a pattern that exists. It is not one particular question that has not been answered; it is a pattern. One gets an answer that says to go to the web page, and one spends time looking at that; that is the pattern we are having, and it is a pattern of sort of duplicity and evasiveness in these answers that I am drawing to your attention—not a particular question. You know yourself, Mr Speaker, that whenever I have had problems with particular questions I have gone to the Minister, and I have dealt with that in that way. What I am telling you now is that this is something quite different: it is systemic

I tell the member that I have been here 38 years, as he knows. I myself lodged many hundreds of questions as an Opposition MP. I doubt whether I was ever entirely satisfied with the answer. I will, however, judge any issue that is brought to me as Speaker.