Points of Order — Questions for Oral Answer—Transfer of Questions

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Before we get to questions, I want to raise with you a point of order that goes to Speakers’ rulings 151/2 and 151/5-6, and to your ruling on 22 May, which has not yet made it into the green book.

Mr Speaker, you have given Opposition members in particular some good advice over a period of time regarding making questions specific and clear if we expect Ministers to be prepared to answer them. This morning the Labour Opposition lodged a question to the Prime Minister that asked whether he stood by his statements that he and his Ministers had made in relation to the Reading Recovery question—that is, whether the Prime Minister stands by his statement. That goes to what is in the Prime Minister’s mind and his opinion. Speaker’s ruling 151/2 does make it clear that there is an ability to transfer, as we all know, but I raised with you, through your office, the question of whether Speakers’ ruling 151/5 might apply in this case, as to whether it was possible for another Minister to indicate what was in the Prime Minister’s mind and who has responsibility for that. I will get back to that point in a second.

The next draft of the question that came back from the Government—it was a proposal to shift it to the Minister of Education—asked whether she stands by her statements and those of the Prime Minister. That is clearly a very different question. It is not a question about whether the Prime Minister stood by his statements; it is a question as to whether that Minister stood by hers and agreed with the Prime Minister, which is quite different. I think we would all accept that no junior Minister could be responsible for what is in the Prime Minister’s mind. It then moved along to whether she had been informed whether the Prime Minister stands by his statements in relation to this, and that is the question that appears on the Order Paper.

Mr Speaker, the point that I would like to take you back to is your ruling on 22 May, where I think you gave some very good advice to, I think, Dr Norman on that particular occasion. You said, in the case of a question to the Prime Minister, that had the member simply asked the Prime Minister whether he stood by his statement with regard to asset sales etc., and then stopped the question, the member’s point would have had merit. We took on your advice from that. We did not ask about ministry advice, we did not ask about any other related matters, and we submitted a question in that format, because we thought that at that point it would not be possible—it is a direct question. Obviously, it is a matter of public knowledge that the Prime Minister is not here, but we have an Acting Prime Minister. It is our view that it becomes a farce if this Parliament—if Opposition members of this Parliament—cannot ask the Prime Minister whether he stands by his statements made about a particular issue in the very recent past. That is why I indicated to the Clerk’s Office, for you, that I thought that this could well be a case for Speaker’s ruling 151/5, because we are getting to the point where it becomes almost impossible to hold the Government to account, to hold the Prime Minister to account for what he says, if, in fact, questions are transferred in this way. I can accept that in a lot of areas it can be appropriate to transfer them, but my submission to you, Mr Speaker, is that it is not possible for any other Minister to be responsible for what is in the Prime Minister’s mind, and, therefore, this goes to the type of question for which transfer should not be allowed.

I think two things are relevant here. Firstly, the question was to do with Reading Recovery, and with comments by other Ministers as well. Secondly, we do not abuse the process, and I reject completely the suggestion by the shadow Leader of the House that we do. Transferring the question to the Minister of Education, particularly on a day when it is plain and evident to everybody that the Prime Minister himself is not in the country, let alone in the House, would have given a better opportunity for the information that the Opposition clearly wanted around Reading Recovery to be properly discussed. The questions never stop with just the question: “Do you stand by all your statements? Yes, I do; end of the question.” They do not. They carry on through the supplementary question process, where further information is sought, presumably and usually about the issue that is identified as part of that question. In transferring the question to the Minister, we were simply wanting to create an opportunity for more information to be more authoritatively given to the House.

But what I would say also is that the question that now appears on the Order Paper is, I think, a little on the tough side. I can see now how we got to this, because both parties would appear to be somewhat unhappy about the question. But I think, rather than going into the merits of the question and how we got there, I would like to just leave my contribution strongly at the fact that we are not trying to frustrate the process at all.

You have been very, very strong over the past few years—the last 4 years—in requiring Ministers to answer questions and to provide information to the House. You have pulled many of us up, including me, for not giving enough information. That is a consideration that we always have in mind when we look at whether or not a question should be transferred. In this circumstance, with Mr Mallard’s own comments that no other Minister could know what was on the mind of the Prime Minister, it seems somewhat ridiculous to be suggesting that the transfer was inappropriate when, in fact, the information itself could never be directly solicited.

Speaking very briefly to that—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I will hear very briefly further from the honourable shadow Leader of the House.

There are two points. The first is that it is well established in the Speakers’ rulings that the absence of a Minister is not the reason for the transfer. It is a matter of responsibility, not presence, and therefore I think part of the response from the Leader of the House fails. But if it was a matter of having a Minister who might be more informed than the person currently acting for the Prime Minister in responding to the question, but keeping the question the same, it is always an option for the Government to have, in the absence of the Prime Minister, another Minister actually answer on his behalf. That might have been the logical and fair thing to do.

I have allowed this point of order to take some time because I think it is a serious issue for the House. I think the Hon Trevor Mallard has raised an interesting dilemma for the House about question time. The fact that New Zealand does not have a Prime Minister’s question time makes our question time a little different from, say, that of the British Parliament. The dilemma that we all face in this—and I think the honourable Leader of the House referred to this in his response to the point of order—is that where a question is whether the Prime Minister stands by statements and other Ministers’ statements, say, in relation to a specific issue, if the Government is assuming that that issue is of the main interest to the questioner, the risk is that if it stays with the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister, in answering, will say that the member should put down a question to the relevant Minister. That is why I think the Government is not trying to, in my understanding, escape accountability in trying to make sure the substance of the issue can best be covered by the relevant Minister.

But I accept that it may not be that way. The questioner may, in fact, wish to be pursuing something very much specific to the Prime Minister’s statement, but that will not automatically be obvious from the question. That is the dilemma. The Government is absolutely entitled to transfer a question, unless it would be anathema to accountability for that to be the case. The member has raised that point, and I agree with him that were the Prime Minister to be the only person who could possibly have information on a certain issue, then the question should not be transferred. Where an opinion is being sought, the bar is not quite at the same level, I would suggest, because an opinion is never quite as important an accountability issue as where the Prime Minister is being questioned on whether or not something happened. And if the Prime Minister is the only person who could possibly know that, then it would be contrary to accountability in this House for such a question to be transferred.

We are in something of a dilemma. As Speaker I am in something of a dilemma in handling this. I absolutely support the Government’s right to transfer questions. What I would like to suggest for the longer term, perhaps, is that the Standing Orders Committee give some thought to whether or not this House would like to set aside any time during a parliamentary session for questions to the Prime Minister. Other Parliaments do have them. That may get over this problem. That is something I leave in members’ minds. I cannot see us easily resolving the issue with our current Standing Orders, because the Speaker cannot possibly know the intention of the questioner when they put the question down—whether they intend to go into the substance of a matter or to stick just with the opinion as to whether the Prime Minister stands by any statements. Opinions certainly are not matters that would prevent a question from being transferred. There is no way, in my view, that we should allow the House to set a standard that a question cannot be transferred just when an opinion is being sought.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to raise with you just two issues. The first is just to touch on the last point you made, which is that I think it is unreasonable for the Government to transfer a question based on where it thinks the Opposition is likely to be going with the question, rather than on where the primary question itself goes. The primary question in this case was quite specific to the Prime Minister’s comments on a particular issue.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: And all his Ministers.

Well, it is a point of order.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! Chris Hipkins.

So the issue we have is that I think the public, quite rightly, expect the Leader of the Opposition to be asking the Prime Minister questions about his comments on a whole range of issues. And where the Prime Minister refuses to answer the question by transferring it to another member, the public, rightly, will think that Parliament is becoming a farce. It is not unreasonable to expect that the Prime Minister will be answering questions from the Leader of the Opposition about comments he has made in public.

I hear what the member is saying, but the obvious problem in the argument being put forward is that one assumes that members are actually interested in the substance of the issues—one assumes that. As soon as the questioner gets into the substance of the issue, the Prime Minister is absolutely at liberty to say that the member should put down a question to the relevant Minister. That has happened, and it has caused points of order to be raised in recent weeks on that very issue, because it was alleged that the Prime Minister had not answered the question. The Prime Minister is absolutely at liberty to make the point that if members want detailed information on a particular issue, the question should be referred to that Minister. The Government is absolutely entitled to transfer questions unless the Prime Minister or the Minister to whom the question is addressed is the only person who could possibly have information of significance. Opinions about whether people stand by certain statements are hardly matters that reach that test, in my view. It is only in recent years that questions have been allowed to cover opinions, and I am not about to see the bar raised on opinions to a situation where questions that seek opinions cannot be transferred. Disallowing the transferral of a question must be restricted only to issues of real significance, where the Prime Minister or the Minister to whom the question is being addressed is the only person who could possibly have that information.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether I can make an observation about these matters, because I was here and Phil Goff was here in 1981, and I know that over recent years these Standing Orders and procedural matters around question time have been changed—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! It is a point of order.

But the point I make is this: question time in this House is now, for interested observers like myself and the public that sit here every day listening, a shambles. It does the Parliament no good—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

—and I suggest—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: No, no. Order! It is not a point of order. It is not a point of order to go down that track.