STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PROCEDURES
8 FEBRUARY 1994
Honourable Members will recall that during the
valedictory remarks at the end of last year's Budget
Sittings, I made some comments about the reform of our
procedures here in the House especially in relation to
Question Time.
The new parliamentary year is a good time for us to be
acting on the recommendations made by the Procedure
Committee in its report, AbZ it Time.
The title itself has a lot of merit: if we want to
preserve the institutions of our democracy, if we want
them to work more effectively we have to be prepared to
change them where necessary. And, of course, there have
been great changes since many of these institutions and
procedures were first introduced.
These changes are overdue as I said last year, the
honourable Member for Bonython and the other members of
the Procedure Committee have done us all a great service
in the preparation of that report.
This week the Leader of the House will be tabling a
detailed government response to the Committee's report
and the House will be considering revised sessional
orders. But there are some points that I wish to
highlight. The Procedure Committee report dealt with three main
areas: first, the handling of legislation particularly
the need to free up chamber time for the proper
consideration of legislation by providing a Main
Committee ( or " second chamber") for handling routine
and uncontroversial bills.
second, parliamentary questions, and particularly
Question Time, and
third, when, and for how long, we sit.
The Government has given consideration to these matters
over the summer recess, and I am pleased to be able to
inform the House that we intend to accept, in whole or in
part, the great majority of the Committee's
recommendations. Sitting times
Taking our sitting times first, it is clear the time has
come to change the hours we sit. As we all know, and the
Committee has confirmed, sitting late into the night,
night after night, is not a productive or particularly
sensible way to conduct our business.
Except at the beginning of new sittings ( and public
holidays), we shall from Monday 21 February sit Monday to
Thursday each sitting week. So far as possible we shall
stick to the ' two-on, two-off' pattern.
In the other place, Senators will also be sitting four
days a week and it will be convenient for the two houses
to have similar patterns of sittings.
Our normal starting and finishing times will be:
Monday 12.30 to 8.00
Tuesday 12.30 to 8.00
Wednesday 9.30 to 8.00, and
Thursday 9.30 to 6.00
QOuestions Mr Speaker, the idea of reforming Question Time goes back
a long way.
In an article on Question Time in the Journal of Public
Administration in 1972, a scholar by the name of John
Howard John H Howard concluded " new procedures and
parliamentary institutions must be implemented". " It is
no longer acceptable", he said, " to rely on conventions
and precedents that were established over 100 years ago".
The Question Time he describes sounds remarkably like the
one we hear complaints about today. " The modern aim of
Question Time", Mr Howard wrote, " appears to be not so
much to seek information as to impart it, or establish
debating points"
He quotes a senior politician saying Question Time
" enlists information to secure a political advantage and
to embarrass the Minister concerned"
" The first concern of a member of Parliament when he is
in the House", Mr Howard said, " does not lie with the
conduct of public administration. It lies with the
survival of his party, whether it be in Government or
Opposition".
All the same criticisms are there in 1972:
fewer and fewer questions being asked
the practice of Dorothy Dixers
the intervention of broadcasting and press publicity
which are alleged to have encouraged the diversion
of Question Time into Dorothy Dixers and attempts to
" score" by the Opposition
the lack of " tranquility" in the Chamber
the impossibility of enforcing Standing Orders as
the Liberal Party Speaker, Sir William Aston said,
" it is impossible to enforce all the Standing Orders
at Question Time. I believe that if I did that,
possibly we would have no Question Time at all."
I know as does the Member for Bennelong that this
Mr Howard was describing it accurately. Because I was
there at the time. And, in fact, as you will see in the
Hansard of 18 April 1972, I spoke on the subject.
Mr Speaker, Question Time has always been a great deal
less than perfect.
As John Uhr wrote in a monograph on the subject a decade
ago: " It would be wrong to look for some golden age of
Australian parliamentary affairs when questions were
asked and answered in an exemplary mode of nonpartisan
public service."
It has never been perfect, Mr Speaker; it has always been
to some degree in need of reform. But the Government of
which the Member for Bennelong was a minister did not
reform it. This Government will.
The Government accepts the Committee's view that Question
Time can be improved and that the time has come to try
some new arrangements.
The Procedure Committee recommended we should have a
limited experiment with the rostering of ministers for
Question Time. They proposed that ministers other than
the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Minister for
Finance would attend Monday Question Times on a roster
based on half-hour segments.
The Government, however, has decided that if change is
needed, there is no point in tinkering at the margins.
We have decided to institute a fully rostered Question
Time on a trial basis for the remainder of this Session.
With other ministers, including the Treasurer, I shall be
available for Question Time on each Monday and Thursday
to take questions ranging across the whole spectrum of
government.
Other ministers will be rostered to answer questions
relating to their portfolios and those of the Senate
ministers they represent. The Leader of the House will
be drawing up the roster and will consult the Manager of
Opposition Business in the process.
Question Time will be at 3.00pm and will last for
minutes as recommended by the Committee, with a minimum
of 14 questions.
It should also be remembered that because the House will
on that schedule be sitting one extra day in each two
week session, there will be an additional 45 minutes of
opportunity for questioning the Government.
All this will mean that more homework will be needed on
both sides of the House. Some Members of the
Opposition's long front bench will have to think up some
questions on their shadow portfolio responsibilities for
the first time.
As the other Mr Howard said in 1972, " The advantage of
the Westminster system is that it makes the questioner
have some degree of responsibility as well as the
minister who has to provide an answer".
Those, like the Member for Bennelong, who complain about
Question Time being used for political purposes, at the
very least ought to have the honesty to admit that the
questions are as political as the answers.
Mr Speaker, our parliamentary system is based on the
Westminster system of government and in my view is
superior to any other. But as I have said, Mr Speaker,
this does not mean it should forever close itself off
from reform.
The reality of the way in which our national politics is
conducted is vastly different from that which existed
when the current arrangements for Question Time and
sitting patterns were instituted decades ago.
The advent of television and other new technology, as
well as the many points of accountability outside this
place, means more emphasis is now placed on
opportunities, and appearances and form as much as
substance; more often than not on the theatrics rather
than the seeking and provision of information.
Some Members of this place have never required an
audience beyond its walls to encourage them: I think you
will find, for instance, that the former Member for
McKellar in the early 1950s was ejected from the House
for doing imitations of a gorilla.
In fact, Mr Speaker, I hope there will continue to be
room for theatre as there has always been in this and
other Parliaments. I, for one, would miss the Member for
Kooyong's angry look terribly. Or the Member for New
England's profound tactical observations.
But I also think the time has come for the emphasis to be
reweighed in favour of substance.
Mr Speaker, these new arrangements will not diminish the
Government's accountability in this place. In many ways,
they will increase accountability across the breadth of
the Government.
To listen to the Honourable Member for Bennelong's
statements about accountability, one could be forgiven
for thinking that I was under constant interrogation in
this place and that these reforms were designed to
protect me from the Leader of the Opposition.
Of course, Mr Speaker, this is nonsense and a quick
perusal of the record of Question Time bears this out.
For instance, last year more questions were asked of
me by the Government than by the Opposition.
The Leader of the Opposition asked, on average, one
question of me per sitting week. Under the new
arrangements he may either increase or decrease this
ratio as he and the Opposition Tactics Committee
sees fit.
For reasons best known, perhaps, to the Opposition,
in 1993 only 87 questions were asked of me, compared
with 276 in 1992.
The fact is, Mr Speaker, the Opposition, any opposition,
chooses its targets according to its perceived political
interests and those on the other side really should not
insult anyone's intelligence by pretending that they
occupy some high moral ground.
In Opposition in 1975 the then Member for Moreton was all
for changing Question Time. It was " choking" the
Parliament, he said.
But did the Government of Malcolm Fraser unchoke it? No.
Malcolm Fraser didn't change a thing.
Malcolm Fraser believed that Members who genuinely wanted
information, as opposed to publicity, should place their
questions on notice for a written answer.
The contemporary record also shows that vast areas of
Government responsibility go largely unscrutinised by the
Opposition. More questions are asked of a broader range
of Ministers by the Government than by the Opposition.
In 1992, 70 per cent of all Opposition questions came
from the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition and
the Leader of the National Party. 70 per cent of all
questions in that year were asked of the Prime Minister
and the Treasurer.
Those who lay claim to being the traditionalists of
Parliament must agree that all this provides a distorted
version of ministerial accountability to the Parliament
and in no way reflects the original intentions of those
who framed the existing arrangements.
Mr Speaker, the reforms we propose ensure that more
ministers are questioned, and provide the opportunity for
more policies to be tested and more detailed scrutiny
given to Government departments and their administration.
In short, the Government's reforms will aid a return to
our genuine parliamentary traditions and help make
Question Time a forum not merely for leaders, but for all
ministers and all parliamentarians. These changes
should, in fact, be supported by traditionalists.
It's entirely consistent with our Westminster
parliamentary tradition, with its emphasis on collective
responsibility, that we should encourage questioning, not
only of the leading ministers, but of all ministers; and
not only questions from the Opposition leaders and
Government backbench, but from all backbenchers.
Handling legislation
I turn to the Procedure Committee's recommendations on
the handling of legislation.
The Government has already made significant changes to
improve the flow of legislation, especially the move to
three periods of sittings and our decision that,
generally, legislation will be introduced in one sitting
for passage in the next.
Nonetheless, the Government has agreed to a trial of the
Procedure Committee's recommendations and has decided
that the machinery should be put in place to allow
uncontroversial bills to be considered by a Main
Committee or " second chamber".
The Government has also agreed that there should be a
Second Deputy Speaker and that he or she will be
nominated by the opposition.
It will take some time for the necessary supporting
arrangements to be put in place but I would hope to see
some initial use of the Main Committee system during the
current Autumn sittings.
The Leader of the House will be giving notice of the
necessary sessional orders and amendments. to the standing
orders of the House this week. The Government intends
that the new sitting times and Question Time arrangements
will start on Monday 21 February.
I believe these are very worthwhile improvements we are
making. Again, let me express my appreciation to all
honourable Members and others who have contributed to the
development of these reforms and particularly to the
honourable Member for Bonython.
L