Speaker’s Rulings — Written Questions—Overdue Replies

Members, towards the end of last year, I ruled on overdue responses to written questions. I’m aware that some but not all Ministers are proactively releasing papers and diaries. Where they do so, a reference to material that is or will shortly be available would be a satisfactory reply to a written question. I repeat Speaker Carter’s ruling that such a reply must be given with some particularity to enable the member asking the question to directly locate the information—Speaker’s ruling 185/1. It may be that the proactive release of information reduces the number of written questions required. However, at present, there are 172 written questions that have not received a final reply. Many of the replies were due in December, but one was due in May last year. It appears that written questions are not working as they were supposed to as an accountability mechanism, so I intend to award the Opposition 10 additional supplementary questions each day until the end of this sitting block or until all the questions due last year have received their final replies—whichever comes first. I will review the situation again in the next sitting period.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Anticipating this issue would come up, my office contacted your office last week to find out how many questions you still had concerns about and was told by your office that you would not supply that information. It’s very difficult for me as the Leader of the House to follow up and ensure that those questions are answered if you will not supply me with that information.

Just being very directly responsive to the member, I do not regard it as my responsibility to ensure that ministerial offices are well managed. I indicated through my office to the member’s office that there were many Ministers involved—very close to the majority of Ministers involved—and that the warning to get up to date should be a general one rather than directed at the specific individual Ministers. If Ministers’ record-keeping systems are not good enough to know that they have overdue questions, then I think the Minister responsible for Ministerial Services should do some sort of review of their offices to make them more efficient.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In this case, many of those questions have actually been answered. The issue is that you do not believe they have been answered satisfactorily. Therefore, if you won’t indicate to me in any particularity which ones you don’t think have been answered satisfactorily, how is the Government supposed to follow that up?

Ministers could go into their inboxes or their staff could go into their inboxes and review the questions in their names that are not shown as being answered.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. They are being shown as being answered. It’s that in many cases you have decided that they haven’t been answered sufficiently. The ruling that you gave before Christmas—in many of those cases, Ministers gave an answer that said the information would soon be available and Ministers have made additional information available. If you are deeming that the information they have subsequently made available is insufficient, I’m happy to follow that up and I’m sure the Government is happy to follow that up, but there are thousands of questions—written questions that were covered by the ruling you made before Christmas—and unless you tell us which ones of those you’re not happy with, how are we supposed to follow it up?

As I’ve said before, you go into your inbox and see which of them have had a final reply. None of the 172 I’ve referred to have had a final reply—none of them.