Every Parliamentary Speaker brings a different approach to refereeing the House, especially Question Time. Some Speakers take a light hand, others try to wrest control. The current Speaker is trying something different. He is almost entirely hands-off.
Question Time is shorter, louder and more chaotic than it has been for a while; but is it doing its job?
Speaker Adrian Rurawhe. Photo:
Letting the House run free
Taking over from Trevor Mallard as Parliament’s Speaker, Adrian Rurawhe had a new approach.
“Since taking over as Speaker of this House, I've taken on board the commentary from most of the parties in the House that they want a more robust Question Time," he says. "It's really up to this House to decide what it wants.”
Trevor Mallard was pretty exacting. His strict control of Question Time likely aggrieved the Opposition. But he was also unusually strict on ministers’ answers to written questions, which benefited the Opposition.
Mallard would intervene to rule questions ‘out of order’ as soon as he realised they were veering outside the rules; Adrian Rurawhe allows almost any question to be asked in full and sometimes leaves it to the ministers to decide whether to answer it.
“I have allowed questions whether they're out of order or not. If it's the Minister's answer that she doesn't have responsibility, then that's the answer,” Rurawhe says. "If the House wants to tolerate out of order questions and address them, they can.”
It’s a simple approach but it has drawbacks. Question Time has increasingly become a contest of political statements couched as questions and answers, but with much less information.
The rules
Question Time has many rules. Questions must not include arguments, inferences, imputations, epithets, ironical expressions or opinions. You can’t make claims that can’t be authenticated. You can’t suggest misconduct, dishonesty or corruption. Many of those things now turn up daily. Rurawhe is letting us judge them ourselves.
“I have allowed the questions to be asked and members of the public will make their own judgments around them,” he says.
In Parliament false claims from either side can go uncorrected. According to the rules, MPs must not accuse each other of lying because all MPs are presumed to be honourable. Thus false claims are hard to respond to and have become a common tactic.
Question Time requires that every claim can be authenticated but no-one is live fact-checking, and only the Speaker could do so. MPs can rebut claims, but if they declare them false they are ordered to “withdraw and apologise”.
Adrian Rurawhe officiating over Question Time Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
If only there was an arbiter
Periodically, MPs complain that it’s getting out of hand. When that happens, the Speaker has tended to threaten that he can blow his whistle if the House wishes him to. The whistle remains deep in his pocket, but Rurawhe acknowledges the rules are being flouted.
“If the House wants to tolerate out of order questions and address them. They can …I think they should be ruled out of order. But …this House has told me that it wants more robust Question Time. Okay, that's entirely up to this house.”
It’s not really up to the House though. If an MP thinks something is against the rules they must point it out to the Speaker (in a point of order), because they are the only MP empowered to decide.
Trying to redraw a line
The rules exist as a result of decades worth of Speakers finding ways to negotiate around tricky ethical, political and practical issues. Putting some rules to one side was always going to be hard. Adrian Rurawhe recently decided to adjust his approach to now require some aspect of every question to be inside the rules.
“I have let things go. I think I'm going to make a new alteration to the way that I have presided over Question Time. At least one part of the question should be in order for it to be valid.”
It brings to mind a rugby referee allowing a try because in the lead up to it ‘at least one of the passes wasn’t forward’.
The Opposition appears pleased with fewer strictures. Senior MPs are quick to fend off any suggestion from the Speaker that he enforce more rules. When Michael Woodhouse recently reassured the Speaker that he has “done a very good job of allowing the flow of questions;” his urgency caused MPs to laugh.
The questions have become more daring. Last week, Act leader David Seymour implied the Prime Minister’s entire department was corrupt. He wasn’t ejected from the House, or asked to ‘withdraw and apologise’. He even kept two extra gifted supplementaries.
But there are also downsides
Highly political questions are poor at forcing telling answers from ministers. Overseeing the government is the most important job of any parliamentary opposition. That takes more than a competition of statement and counter-statement. The very best weapon of any opposition is a very tight and well constructed question line. It is more effective inside the rules. The idea is the minister hangs themselves by their answers. Flinging accusations they can deny doesn’t achieve that.
