Points of Order — Oral Questions—Question No. 8 to Minister

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to draw your attention to question No. 8, and I also want to draw your attention to Standing Order 120—page 29. I waited until question time was over. During the context of question No. 8, we heard the Opposition member recite at least four or five names of New Zealanders who have had awful experiences in the context of cancer. Now, as a cancer survivor, I warn anyone trying to make politics out of that, but I want some guidance. He made a statement which imputed that the Minister of Health was deriving better livelihood by not attending to the cases pertaining to those names of God-fearing New Zealanders who find themselves in these awful circumstances. Not only does that lower the tone of the House but I think it is very unfair on those New Zealand families that they should be used in such a grubby, political manner.

Speaking to the point of order, I would simply make the point that all of the questions contained quotations that had been in the public domain for some weeks, by cancer patients who volunteered their stories to either the media or the select committee. And, as such, the questions seemed quite in order.

The key point that I am focused on is for your guidance for an Opposition member, who may or may not feel he is morally entitled, to use the suffering of those families to then impute that the sense of wellbeing associated with the Minister’s political stance is of greater value than the names that he has disgracefully trotted out in question time.

I think, my memory of, just going back—and I will check the tapes and if necessary come back to the House—was that the expression used was “wellbeing” to do with the Minister, rather than “livelihood”. It’s a technical point but it might end up being important.

But I’ve really got a couple of points to make. The first is that supplementary questions are not meant to contain any more information than is necessary for the question. My view was that some of the material that the member put into his questions was not necessary in order to get to the essence of the question; that they were bulked out—I mean, I don’t want to get to the point of trying to take politics out of Parliament, but they were bulked out for political effect.

The other question is a question of taste, I think. I think that there would be a large number of members who would be of the view that the approach the member took was not appropriate, but that Speakers have generally ruled that it has been a matter for the member who is asking the question, and is more likely to be ruled out in the court of public opinion—more appropriately ruled out that way—than by me as Speaker.

So, I want to thank the member for his point of order. I point out to him, of course, that I understand why he left it for some time—generally they should be brought up straight away—but my view is that, at the moment, there’s nothing other than some criticism of myself for letting things run a bit long, and I don’t take it as a reflection on me from the member that I should rule on.

You have told the House that you believed it was a matter of taste about whether or not the Opposition should be engaging in this line of questioning. I want to put on record that, indeed, these patients have an expectation that the Opposition will compare the descriptions of wellbeing that have been articulated by the Government with their lived experience, and I stand by every one of those questions.

If that was the only matter when members of Parliament rise to their feet to answer questions, that would be correct. But, realistically, any one of us on any day could stand in this House and recount a tale of tragedy and try to blame the other side. If we are to go down that route then you can see that it leads to disorder and that equivalent examples will go back the other way.

💬 Chris Bishop: He’s spent nine years doing it. Look at your own side.

Really, you know, these things can go too far—

💬 SPEAKER: Mr Bishop, be quiet!

—and I think that in the House we have to be careful that we don’t descend too far into using human tragedy for political effect.

Mr Speaker, when you’re considering this matter—I’ve been a Minister in a previous Government and I’ve been held accountable for individual child deaths by the Opposition, in my role as a Minister. This is a frequent practice in this House and if any one of us go back and look through Hansard we might find that there are more of us who have partaken of this sort of activity over the years. So, for someone to take offence at it now, or to be disturbed by it now, when the boot’s on the other foot, seems to me to be rather rich.

Well, I thank the member for most of her point of order.

I’d just ask you to reflect on your comments and your ruling. Two points, really. I just back up what the Hon Anne Tolley has said. I’ve been a former Associate Minister of Immigration and I have had my reputation impugned around the death of an individual. So, the first point that I’d make is that it is not unusual in this House to have that level of accountability around individual constituents.

The second thing that I’d say—and I note that the Hon Shane Jones has said that he’s a cancer survivor, but so am I. What I know is that there are a huge number of New Zealanders for which they lobby members of Parliament so that their cases are raised in this House. That is their right as democratic citizens and that happens all the time as constituency MPs. I would hate to think that our democracy was curbed in this area and that members of Parliament could not feel that they could raise those constituency cases.

Right, I want to thank all members for the contributions that they’ve made and I know that all of them are made in a heartfelt manner and people are exceptionally sincere about their concerns, even if they come from different directions. In fact, my relatively long experience in this place is that there is always a danger of people’s approaches changing when they change sides of the House, and I think it’s not a healthy situation.

I’m going to, I think, reiterate the essential point that I made that this is not an area—first of all, I don’t accept the point that Michael Woodhouse made. There is a question of taste. People might have different tastes and different approaches to it, but there is a variety of opinion within the House and there has always been, in these matters.

I will say that it’s my distant memory that in the period when the Hon Jenny Shipley was Prime Minister and the Rt Hon Helen Clark was, I think, the Opposition spokesperson on health—or probably the Leader of the Opposition, actually, but experienced in the health area—there were quite a number of mental health cases which were being used by both sides against each other in a way that, generally, the senior members of the House ended up thinking was inappropriate.

My understanding was that there was a meeting between leaders and they made a decision together to de-escalate the use of the House in that way. I felt at the time and still think that it was a good thing to have done, but the point that I do want to make is that that is essentially a political decision; it’s not a parliamentary decision and it’s not one for me to take.