Standing Orders

I move, That the amendments to the Standing Orders set out in Part 2 of the report of the Standing Orders Committee on the Review of Standing Orders be adopted, with effect from the day after the dissolution or expiration of the present Parliament.

We must be getting close to a general election, because normally when Parliament adopts its new Standing Orders for the next term of Parliament it’s one of the last things we do before we cease sitting for the general election campaign, which we will do tomorrow after question time and after the adjournment debate has concluded. The triennial review of the Standing Orders is an opportunity for Parliament to make sure its rules are fit for purpose. We do this once every three years, although we do have the opportunity to trial new changes in the intervening period, and we have certainly done that in this term of Parliament.

Parliament has its traditions—traditions we should be proud of—but that doesn’t mean Parliament should not continue to adapt and evolve as the world around us continues to adapt and evolve. If we don’t do that, Parliament will quickly become an irrelevant institution that people will stop listening to.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Who knew!

And in fact, there are some, a few, a rare few, who perhaps don’t find Parliament as engrossing as they used to, and I think that’s a tragedy.

This year’s report is one of the more progressive that I’ve seen in my time as a parliamentarian, and I want to thank all of the members of the Standing Orders Committee for what I think was a very collegial and constructive process where we were able to test out some radical ideas. Not all of them made it through the process, but we gave them a good go during the process, and I think that that was really constructive.

COVID-19 forced the Parliament to operate in different ways, and one of the things that that did was it forced us to try things that we might not have otherwise tried, which, as it turned out, actually are quite good. We used much more video conferencing and digital engagement through our select committee processes, and we found that that actually works quite well. It’s a better way of engaging a lot of the public, who can’t necessarily come and meet with us in person. It’s also quite a good way for committees to deal with some of the administrative business that they need to deal with during adjournment weeks where they might not always want to fly to Wellington just to deal with the more mundane administrative matters that sometimes select committees deal with, and that was a good thing. We discovered that we can actually lodge papers electronically rather than having to trot on down to the Clerk’s Office and hand them over in person. Who knew that that would be possible? But we have discovered that that is something that we can do, and that’s a very good thing.

There are some other innovations in this report which I think do deserve a brief mention. We have looked closely at the issue of petitions. We’re seeing more and more petitions coming to Parliament, and we do need a better way of managing that process, making sure that the petitions are ending up in the right place, that they’re being dealt with in a timely manner, and that those petitions that need a speedy response without an in-depth investigation get the speedy response that they’re looking to. So we are establishing a petitions committee that will, in the first instance, deal with all petitions, and they can refer petitions to subject select committees for further examination.

We have at long last had a look at the 15 hours that we spend on the annual Budget debate, and I think after some consideration there was a degree of consensus that perhaps 15 hours wasn’t the length of time that we needed any longer for the Budget debate, particularly given it often meant that the Budget debate would go on for three or four weeks in a row, and by the time we got to the end of the Budget debate, very few people could remember what was said in the first part of the debate, and, therefore, perhaps it was time for us to consider whether that should be shortened. So we’ve shortened that Budget debate down, and that’s a welcome development.

What’s also welcome is that we’re using that additional time not for additional Government business but, actually, to open up some of the other areas of parliamentary activity that wouldn’t normally get debated in this Chamber to the level of scrutiny, public transparency, and, of course, debate that we have if we can put them on the Order Paper. The Standing Orders report, right at the end, makes some recommendations about the sorts of things we might want to spend a bit more time debating, and I think that those are very good suggestions being put forward there. It gives us an opportunity to debate things like the performance of our Crown entities, rules made around climate change, briefings that have been provided on the state of the Public Service, the opportunity for us to actually look beyond things that don’t necessarily just relate to legislation or money, which is where most of Parliament’s time currently gets spent. It will allow that space for what we’ve been urged to do, which is to look a little bit beyond the horizon to some of the longer-term challenges we face as a country. I think additional debate provides us the opportunity to do that.

There are a couple of other very brief things that I want to mention. Ministers are being encouraged to attend select committees more often to talk about their bills, and one of the particular suggestions is that where a bill that the Minister should be engaging on is first sent to a select committee, it wouldn’t hurt if the Minister showed up for the initial briefing on the bill and had some engagement with the select committee at that early stage, and we certainly, as a committee, would unanimously encourage future Ministers to do that.

One of the innovations of this term of Parliament that I am really, really proud of is the revamp of the way we deal with committee stage debates in this House. They had become repetitive, boring, formulaic, and they were adding nothing to the quality of the legislative process. By moving to more of a question and answer approach during the committee stage, both for the committee stage of bills and also for the way we handle annual reviews and the Estimates process, I think we are making them much more relevant. We’re providing an opportunity for the Opposition to genuinely hold the Government to account, and I do mean that because, actually, I think this process will quickly highlight if Ministers aren’t on top of the bills that they’re bringing before the House or aren’t on top of their spending commitments that they’re bringing before the House, and I think that’s a very positive development. So I think that’s an innovation we should all be proud of. It took a while to get everybody on board with it, but we have proven in this Parliament that it can work, and there was next to no debate about continuing that innovation in the next Parliament, because we know that it works and that’s a very good thing.

One other significant thing that I want to highlight is the ability for members’ bills to be introduced automatically, rather than having to go through the ballot, if they have the majority support of the House of non-Ministers. That stops the Government of the day stacking the members’ days with Government business, or business that should be Government business, but it does give the opportunity for the rest of Parliament, out of the control of the executive, to have a bit more say over legislation coming before the House, and I think that’s a positive development.

The final thing is a minor thing but it will make a lot of difference to a lot of members of Parliament. Parliament will no longer sit until 6 o’clock on Thursdays regularly. We will now finish at 5 o’clock on Thursdays and we will do that without reducing Parliament’s sitting hours by reducing the length of the dinner break on Tuesday and Wednesday from an hour and a half to one hour. It will mean, particularly with these very constrained flight schedules that many members now deal with, that most members will be able to get home on a Thursday night to their families and not have to stay over for an extra night, with many having to wait until Friday morning to get home—a sure sign that we are making progress towards Parliament being a more family-friendly place.

So, with that, I commend these changes to the House.

I’m pleased to rise on behalf of the National Party to provide our support for the motion, and I shall do so forthwith—[Interruption] Now, only one or two people in the House will laugh at that—it is definitely an in-joke with the Standing Orders Committee—but it does actually speak to one of the tensions that we have when we amend Standing Orders. I just want to touch on it. I think this is the third Parliament that I have been involved in the Standing Orders Committee process. One of the things that we often hear is that we’re somewhat reluctant to change or that we are very conservative in our approach. We look for consensus or near-unanimity in our deliberations on it, and that is exactly as it should be, but I want to defend this sort of measured pace that we go at to change the way in which this place operates.

One of the things we’ve heard in the valedictories over the last couple of weeks is a tremendous amount of respect not only for the traditions of this place but also for the support that we’re provided by the clerks and Hansard, and our public sector more broadly. I think we should be very proud, despite the fact that we occasionally fall below a very high standard, that actually this place works really well and it works well because we have a shared understanding about what the rules of engagement are, and they are largely set out through the Standing Orders.

One of the things the Leader of the House mentioned was a very good example of where a sessional order has been adapted into the Standing Orders—and we did so willingly—and that was in respect of the manner in which the committee of the whole House operates. But I would suggest to him and the House that that had its genesis in the last Parliament when one presiding officer, the Hon Trevor Mallard—now the Rt Hon Trevor Mallard, our Speaker—changed the way in which the committee stage went by requiring Ministers to answer good questions, and if they didn’t, the committee stage would continue, but expecting scrutineers of bills in the committee of the whole House to ask good questions and if they didn’t, the debate would be closed down.

So while we’ve reached a point now where we have this much more interactive and really more meaningful examination of the bill, it actually started, I think, in the last Parliament. So that’s an example of why we need to make haste in a measured manner; I wouldn’t say slowly, because, actually, in the course of this place, actually doing that change over, say, a Parliament and a half is actually a reasonable approach. I expect that the other, what are on the face of it, minor changes—for example, to the hours of Parliament, which we only really got a small change, but we had a very wide-ranging discussion about what was possible. I think those ideas will continue to germinate in the 53rd Parliament and we may see some more bold changes to things like that.

I want to also touch on two of the matters that the Hon Chris Hipkins raised. One is petitions, and I really support the idea of having a petitions committee and a triage process. But I want to provide reassurance to members of the public that I don’t believe that will result in a diminishing of the importance of petitions. It’s one of the really, really important parts of the Westminster system that the public can come and tell us what they think and what changes could be made. In my experience, we treat them very seriously, but there is a more efficient way in which we can do it. So in creating that efficiency, it’s important that we don’t undermine the importance of the petitions process.

The last thing I want to touch on is in respect of the shortened—which one was it?—15-hour Budget debate, which now will free up what will be seven hours of debate time for non-Government business, which is a good start. But I hope it doesn’t finish there, because, actually, if we are more efficient with the committee of the whole House process, if we can better utilise this time with more meaningful debates, then those meaningful debates can include what I know Westminster does and other Westminster-type Parliaments around the world do, which is actually dedicate more time for non-Government business. I think that could well be a good thing.

The last one I want to touch on—I don’t think Minister Hipkins mentioned it—is the fact that Ministers are now going to be able to table their speeches and talk to them. So what we will have, I think, is a much more meaningful first reading debate as well, and that will add, I think, to the lustre of the dialogue. Because Minister Hipkins is right: he has been critical that we are not always treating this place with the respect it deserves and the robustness of our contest of ideas, and I hope that that’s actually another measured step in the right direction.

I want to conclude by thanking the people who supported us through this process, not only the submitters to it but also the clerks, particularly the two Davids, Wilson and Bagnall, but also, you know, the big team that was around them. They had a herculean task of organising the wide-ranging and detailed submissions that we had on the Standing Orders review, and they did a tremendous job in difficult circumstances because COVID affected their ability to be able to keep things moving. But despite that—in fact, even perhaps because of it—we have what I’m convinced is the best set of amendments to the Standing Orders in the five Parliaments that I’ve been in. I think that’s a testament to the Clerk’s team. So I just want to thank them on behalf of members of the committee and the House. With that, I’m very happy to support this motion.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 11.39 p.m.