Speaker’s Rulings — Written Questions—Replies

Members, at the request of the Minister of Health, I’m going to rule on concerns about replies to written questions. Ministers have a responsibility to the House and through the House to the country to account for the public offices they hold. Questions are an important element of this accountability and Ministers should therefore take questions seriously and endeavour to give informative replies to questions they are asked. Speakers’ ruling 186/5 applies equally to oral and written questions. Consistent with the importance of questions, I remind Ministers that they should not commence answers to questions with a political attack—Speaker’s ruling 191/3. This is especially true of answers to written questions which do not contain political statements and are not asked in the heat of the debating chamber.

Generally, where a member is concerned with a reply to written questions, they are expected to raise it with the Minister first—Speakers’ ruling 196/4. However, when an answer commences with an unnecessary political attack on another party and especially when the matter has been raised in the past, it is reasonable that a member raises it directly with the Speaker. For the sake of clarity I am now ruling that such matters may be brought immediately to the Speaker’s attention without raising them with the Minister first.

Finally, I would remind Ministers that I endeavour to be courteous and helpful in my written correspondence with members and I would appreciate that approach being reciprocated.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder if you could also look at the nature of some of the questions that are being lodged. As a result of a decision that you made—I think it was earlier this year—to allow more than two legs to a written question, the nature of some of the written questions has become more political, and in terms of the nature of the exchange that we have here in the House, I think there has generally been an approach that if a member asks a particularly political question, then they can expect a particularly political answer. Now that questions can be longer and can contain more quotations and statements, by definition they often are becoming more political in nature, and I think it would be somewhat unfair to say that a question can be more highly political but an answer to it could not be.

I will be absolutely willing to look at that if members choose to bring them to me. The ruling that I attempted to make in the past was not to allow more quotations but to allow multiple legs in order to have Ministers answer one question rather than 200 or 300 containing very similar information. It was an attempt to make it easier for the House and to make the system more efficient, and I’m quite happy, if Ministers feel that written questions are outside either the letter or the spirit, for them to bring them to me directly.

Just further clarifying what I was saying, Mr Speaker, I guess what I was asking is that where members who are receiving an answer raise with you the political nature of the answer, in assessing whether any further action is taken you’ll consider the nature of question that has been asked.

Absolutely, and I did on about half a dozen occasions in this case.