Points of Order — Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill—Circulation of Supplementary Order Paper

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am in uncharted waters. I apologise for interrupting question time. My point of order pertains to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Bill, which is before the House, and I raise this issue because of the pressure of time. The advice I seek is about this matter. I received on my desk a draft copy of a Government Supplementary Order Paper, some 3 hours and 10 minutes after the Committee stage began. I have taken advice from the Clerk, and the Clerk has confirmed that an official copy of the Supplementary Order Paper has not been provided to the Clerk’s Office yet, so I presume the copy I have has draft status.

The question is simply about this: given that the agreed timetable for this bill is that it moves back into the Committee stage directly after question time—and one would assume that would be in the next hour or thereabouts—and concludes at 6 p.m. with the third reading, that provides the House with less than an hour, possibly half an hour to 1 hour if the voting that would to occur to initiate the third reading is included. That is all the time that members would have to scrutinise this Supplementary Order Paper. The status of this document is draft at this point. My question is simply this: what avenues do members have to properly scrutinise a 10-page Supplementary Order Paper in less than an hour, probably half an hour to 40 minutes, in order to do justice to this important bill?

I think it is fair that we have a proper representation of what has occurred here. Firstly, the Labour Party asked for a committee process to be held, and the Government agreed to that. Submissions were called for from people, and admittedly they had a limited amount of time for submissions. But those submissions were made in good faith, and they were heard in good faith by the Local Government and Environment Committee members. The recommendations that came from those submitters were provided to the Government late yesterday, after the select committee finished hearing from me and officials at about 8 p.m. last evening.

Officials then worked until the small hours of the morning, until 4.30 this morning, to prepare a table, which is sitting in front of the Clerk at the moment, and which was made available to members this morning, indicating on each of the recommendations from each of the submitters what the Government’s view was on those recommendations. There is no desire here to do anything other than accommodate what people have said, if possible, and the consequence of that is that from 7.30 this morning the drafting team has been working to put what is in that table into the Supplementary Order Paper—that is, in the language of the law—and making sure that all t’s are crossed and all i’s are dotted.

There is no desire by the Government to do anything tricky. I am about to send a note to a member on the other side who wanted to know what was in here that might not have come from submitters. I can indicate that around clause 40 there has been a wider consideration to make sure that obligations that should fall on one party do so, and not on the general taxpayer. In the end, I think it is fair to say that every effort has been made to accommodate the suggestions made by the people who made submissions. I am sorry that the drafters could not work fast enough, but the officials have not let us down. The timetable could have been moved in a different way, but we did not get resolution on some of those issues last week and we are in the situation we are in. But I do not believe that this House’s scrutiny of the recommendations from submitters to the select committee process has been impeded by the arrival of the Supplementary Order Paper at this late point. What was provided to Mr Cosgrove and his colleagues a few moments ago was the document that has gone to the printers. It is being printed, and will be placed on the Table of the House as soon as the printing process is completed.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I will hear the honourable member the Hon Clayton Cosgrove further because of that long intervention.

The dilemma we have is that Parliament has an inability to scrutinise that the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted, to put it as the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery did, unless we have the official document. I just say that the total timetable for this legislation, as with any legislation, in the name of the Minister is in his hands. We were provided—indeed, after I requested it last night—with a summary document and I am grateful for that. The difficulty with this is that, firstly, it has no parliamentary status, and, secondly, it does not give the wording, the definitions, etc., allowing proper scrutiny of it. The dilemma I face is that we have now been told that this may be the document, so we have about an hour and a half of total time to debate this. We have spent about 3 hours talking about everything bar the Supplementary Order Paper, because it has not been available. This is a critical bill, and we want to insist—

I think the member has made his point. The matter I wanted elucidated was the status of the document that the member had when he raised his point of order. It would appear to me it is a document that has been provided to him by the Minister prior to the tabling of the document, to assist the member in handling the Committee stage of this legislation—to provide an advance copy of the Government’s proposed Supplementary Order Paper. It would seem to me that that has been an action that is perhaps courteous—to provide at the earliest opportunity a document, even though it is not the tabled document.

All I can say in relation to the matter is that the timetable of the Committee is not a matter for the Speaker. At the end of this question time the House will go back into Committee, and there are no formal time lines for a Committee stage. The matter is in the hands of the Committee to consider the amendments, and if the matters in the Supplementary Order Paper are of real substance and members debate them in great detail, obviously the Chair of the Committee has to listen very carefully to that detailed debate. But as Speaker I cannot change anything that has happened. It would seem to me that the member has been provided with a copy of the Supplementary Order Paper at the earliest opportunity, and, as I say, there is nothing the Speaker can do at this stage.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think there is a resolution to this problem that might meet with the agreement of the whole House. Leave could be sought—and the Greens would be prepared to seek leave—to make a decision that this bill would not be completed today in urgency, and that urgency would be lifted. We would extend the state of emergency for 2 or 3 more weeks and complete the final stages of the bill in the next sitting period. I think that would meet with the agreement of Parliament.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: We will not take the time of the House today in debating this matter. Of course, the member realises that the Government is extremely unlikely to agree to such leave, so that is an extremely unlikely solution. I suggest to members that the House will be back in Committee shortly after question time, and the Committee will have the opportunity to consider its own debate from that point on. As Speaker, I cannot predetermine any of that.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Is this a further point of order?

Yes, very short. I want therefore to ask you whether you are in a position to advise us whether it is appropriate or good parliamentary practice to have a 3 or 4-hour debate specifically dealing with a Government Supplementary Order Paper when there is no Government Supplementary Order Paper.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member knows that Committees can start Committee stage debates prior to a Supplementary Order Paper being available. There is nothing unusual about that.

💬 Hon David Parker: Oh!

💬 Mr SPEAKER: There is nothing unusual about that. The member is shaking his head; he is entitled to do that. But the member raising the point of order will understand the situation—that the Government has tried to enable submitters to have input into the legislation. Time frames are such that they are tight. But the Committee stage is in the hands of the Committee. The time the Committee may take to consider amendments is in its hands, and as Speaker I cannot interfere in that. There is no further point in pursuing the matter today. I suggest to the member, though, that the fact that he has been provided with a copy of the proposed Supplementary Order Paper prior to its tabling is actually helpful, not counter-productive.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: It had better be a new point of order, because we are not going to waste more time in the House.

I will waste very little time. There is one point of your ruling that I think I would like to relitigate. I am not—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: There will be no further interjections from the Government benches.

I am not going to comment on your final ruling, Mr Speaker, which of course is correct—that it is within the realm of the Government to have late Supplementary Order Papers if it likes. I think, though, you said that it was not unusual for this to happen. I think it is not unique, but it certainly is not a normal or recommended practice.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I accept the point the member is making—that it is obviously not an ideal practice. I fully accept that. Perhaps my language should have included the fact that it is not common. But the practice happens from time to time. I fully accept that it is not ideal. I think the House has taken sufficient time. The fact that a Supplementary Order Paper has been made available to members prior to its tabling is, I believe, helpful to the House. I am advised the Supplementary Order Paper has now been tabled.

Question time resumed.