Not long after the new Senate was sworn in back in August, there was a brief flurry of coverage about the possibility of some significant reforms being made to Question Time, with a few people finally having the honesty to acknowledge it was basically a waste of time as an accountability or information gathering mechanism. Instead, it served mainly as platform to provide entertainment for press gallery journalists. In the Senate, where Question Time is routinely ignored even by the press gallery, it doesn’t even serve that purpose.
The Senate’s Procedure Committee has since been examining some possible changes, and yesterday it brought down a report recommending a two week trial of a few modest reforms. It is a fair way short of the New Zealand style approach which had been floated previously, but at least it’s a genuine effort to make Question Time “a more effective mechanism for seeking the accountability of the executive government to the Parliament.”
The proposed change, which would apply for the final two weeks of sitting for the eat, starting 24 November, is as follows:
- no notice to be given of questions, as at present
- primary questions to be limited to one minute and the answers to them to two minutes (currently four minutes)
- two supplementary questions to be allowed to the questioner (instead of the current one)
- supplementary questions and the answers to them to be limited to one minute each
- answers to be required to be directly relevant to each question.
In effect, it requires a shorter initial answer and allows one extra supplementary question.
I am not sure how much difference that will make. The big challenge will be the interpretation of when an answer is or isn’t “directly relevant to the question”. The main failure of Question Time is the refusal of Ministers to actually answer the question (which is why it’s called Question Time, not Answer Time). Requiring the answer to be “directly relevant” is presumably intended to address this, but it will be hard work for the Senate President (Qld Labor’s John Hogg) to force Ministers to give real answers when they don’t want to.
Ironically, reducing their answer time to 2 minutes will make it easier for Ministers to dodge the question – literally twice as easy, as they will only have to waffle or go on tangents for half as long.
Still, it’s good they’re having a go at reform. If it’s approached in the right spirit and a genuine effort made by all to make it work, it might even make Senate Question Time into something of value (although that doesn’t make it any more likely that the press gallery will pay any more attention to it than they do now – there’s far too much theatre in the House of Reps to drag them away purely because there’s some information to be found).
The Senate will decide today on whether to adopt this brief trial, although given it’s a unanimous recommendation from the Procedure Committee, it is fairly likely they will.
UPDATE: The proposal was adopted by the Senate without dissent. It will operate for the final two sitting weeks of the year, starting November 24th.
10 Comments
I think they should’ve gone all the way on this. Question time as it stands fails, both on accountability and on the general provision of information. I don’t think there’d really be much to break by giving more extensive reform a go. Senator Faulkner’s contribution to the debate was fairly interesting.
Can, or would, the president record the fact that the question was not addressed in the answer, and periodically publish a percentage of questions dodged by each minister?
He could but I don’t know why he would. In answer to whether he ‘would’ I strongly doubt it.
The ‘directly relevant’ rule will probably just result in some ruling from the President which allows Ministers a more broad scope in answering the question. Ministers can of course refuse to answer questions. There’s nothing to state they have to answer any question put to them, just that if they choose to answer they cannot debate the question and now must answer in a way that is ‘directly’ relevant to the question.
Question Time is currently both inefficient and ineffective.
I’d like to see a “watchdog” to keep checking that the different parliamentary processes are achieving their purpose (e.g. for the watchdog to publish stats, not only on how many questions are dodged, but also to categorise the type of questions asked — I’m sick of all the time wasted on “who said what” when Australia has some real issues that need addressing).
I’d also like Question Time to stop being broadcast on ABC TV and Radio. Take away the politicians soapbox and ability to grandstand.
A third change is the very costly and archaic need to fly everyone to Canberra. Instant Messaging, Teleconferencing or Videoconferencing would work just as well.
I strongly oppose all of the ideas in gazelle’s post.
Why is that, Itep? And what do you mean by “they should’ve gone all the way on this”?
While I’m fond of my ideas, I welcome other viewpoints, and constructive criticism.
Here is my reasoning in more detail, for people to pick apart:
The basic premise: the purpose of Question Time (QT) is to keep parliament accountable. I think it also aims to improve transparency.
QT is inefficient because of the large amount of wasted time and money that does not contribute to its purpose. QT itself costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus all of the background time spent in preparation. I do not see that it adds equivalent value in ensuring “accountability” or “transparency”. As far as I know, there has been no analysis of QT, to report the amount of time spent discussing different topics. From my observations, too much time is spent talking about low-impact issues (e.g. “What’s G20?”) instead of on high-impact issues (e.g. the economic crisis, carbon pricing). The public consensus is that QT is an embarrassing part of Australian parliament, and if grown people behaved like that in a business meeting they would quickly be shown the door.
QT is ineffective because the parliament still lacks “accountability” and “transparency”. Great bills are passed with promised gains based on predictions, yet I see no follow-up record of “actual” versus “promised” achievements.
Using a “5 Why’s” technique for drilling through to the root causes:
Why is QT inefficient? During the process (from preparation to execution), there is no consideration of whether each action adds value toward achieving the overall function.
Why? Because there is no independent monitoring of the process itself.
Why? Such monitoring removes the politicians’ flexibility to use QT for their own ends.
Why? QT is a primary forum for political point-scoring that is broadcast to the voters, without journalist intervention.
The causes of QT’s ineffectiveness are much the same: there is no monitoring of the process itself, and no measure of whether QT is meeting its purpose.
Actions:
=> Establish an independent authority to monitor the process.
=> Stop broadcasting QT, to remove the incentive to pervert QT as a political tool rather than as a tool to maintain standards.
=> Empower the independent authority to penalise parliamentarians for not meeting targets (e.g. cost targets). The use of 21st century technology was just an example of possible cost savings, but the real requirement is that parliamentarians need to have limits imposed, because they doing a terrible job of self-regulating.
To my reading, question time (in either house) is designed to keep the executive government (via the ministers) accountable not parliament per se. By definition you would think that the government senators would/should not need to or be able to ask questions to keep their own party (government) accountable but there you go…It is supposedly aimed at getting information to contribute to debate so it may have merit. Sadly it just seems to be a tennis match where an opposition (senator) attacks a perceived weakness and a minister parries then some friendly-fire pre-arranged question sets up a nice PR opportunity and so on. A little less rough-and-tumble than the lower house but only just a little. There have been various efforts to restrict ministerial appointments to the lower house only which would negate question time but these have generally been overturned. I am sure Andrew B has relished the occassional question to a minister or two. I would like to hear a lot more from the independents (well, maybe not the two we have in the senate now!) and the minor parties but it all feels a bit adversarial rather than a quest for truth which I believe it should be.
Gazelle: Not sure about the cost at only about an hour at a time and the preparation (aka knowledge or research) is the only thing we pay them all for anyway. Some value for $ return there. Make ‘em work I say! The President and Deputy Pres (opposite parties so arguably independent) could and should police it better. “Directly relevant” is obvious to you and me and I am sure was always the intention so this is just a tightening up. Information is asked for and it should be given. Pity we have to spell it out. There is room for supplementary Q’s if answer not suitable but by golly a lot goes through to the keeper leaving me scratching my head and saying “huh?” I think the whole process in both places has degenerated into a tug-of-war and the trouble is you and I are the rope! Not sure about the telecommute, it has merit and may well be the future but I would like Andrew B to shed some light on what else goes on out in the other offices before they “ring the bells” and what merit it all has. A lot of pollies could use digitised avatars or looped video feeds and never actually turn up (this alone could enhance productivity). There may be legal implications but these could be sorted. Plus… we would need affordable national broadband first! hmmmmm
Put me in there and I’ll sort ‘em for ya.
Gazelle, how can you independently assess the merit of particular questions? To me, the G20 questions did have a lot of merit and were important questions to ask. What is wrong with politicians using question time for their own means? Surely the parliament should be a place where people can choose what to do, say and ask freely without any attempt to curtail that.
I also strongly object to your suggestion that question time should not be broadcast. Broadcasting of question time, at least potentially, helps minor parties to try and get their message out on a more even basis as the two major parties. It also acts to give the public one more avenue to access parliamentary debates. I can see no reason to restrict public access to parliamentary proceedings.
As to your suggesting that they dispense with actually having a chamber and just allow digital attendance I find this suggestion horrible in every way. This would allow staffers to digitally vote for senators on their behalf, allowing unelected people to exercise even more power in the parliamentary process. It is the duty of elected members and senators to attend, to speak and at the very least attend the chamber for divisions.
The suggestion that parliament is a waste of money is, to me, extremely insulting to all those who participate.
Thanks for the responses.
@Beevo, nice idea to get the Pres + Deputy to monitor things, rather than setting up an expensive watchdog. Other countries have a process to oversee the parliament, but not Australia.
Re telecommuting: in my (business, not political) experience, geographical separation is little hindrance to communication before or after the big group session. Again, I question the cost/benefit. A video loop would cost less than a snoring pollie!
I agree that the public perception of QT is as a chaotic and unconstructive adversarial tug-of-war. Sadly, this seems to be the destiny of all two-party systems, but hopefully we can at least clean up QT.
@ltep, you’ve raised some curly complications.
I consider it a form of corruption to pervert a process for selfish means. But sadly I think it inevitable that any process will get abused. What is important is to have a mechanism to ensure that the process is still meeting its purpose. We do not currently have such a mechanism.
I disagree that parliament should be so free. The parliamentarians are put there for a purpose. Anything outside of that purpose is a waste of taxpayers money. Parliamentarians should not be free to waste money (e.g. raising unimportant issues during QT).
The sticky issue, as you mentioned, is how to objectively decide what is relevant/important. If we cannot trust the judgement of a single body (which we do in law), then we can smooth out any subjectiveness by increasing the sample (as we do in soft sciences). I am sure it a manageable problem, but would meet so much resistance it would take a brave person to implement it. It’s a difficult problem. Any ideas?
While I see the theoretical benefits of broadcasting, I do not think that QT (as it stands) is helpful to minor parties nor to the public. Perhaps once behaviour improves and QT starts functioning as intended, then broadcasts can resume, but until then, I think that the broadcast unfortunately encourages participants to perpetuate the problem and use QT for petty point-scoring. Until then, there are more worthwhile aspects of parliament that can be reported.
The technological problems raised are all solvable using existing technology. On top of that, any breaches would cause an uproar, enough to end a career. So I do not think it is a show-stopper.
While we look at such details, let’s not lose sight of the underlying problems:
- QT is wasteful, with no consideration of the cost/benefit.
- There is no mechanism to ensure that QT is achieving its purpose.
If you agree with these problems, I’m keen to see more ideas on addressing them. If you disagree with these issues, I’m keen to see why, but acknowledge that we’ll need to “agree to disagree”.
I did not mean that all of parliament was a waste of money, and am sorry if anyone took offence. I meant that the process, particularly QT, was broken and very wasteful. QT, I believe, has degenerated to a point where I question the cost/benefit. But as for the rest of parliament, I am repeatedly impressed by the work of our parliamentarians, such as reports that come out of the committees.
Gazelle: I think a lot of Parliament has become a waste of money and time rather than its assumed intention to be a valuable and productive instrument of government. The mooted reforms can only help make things more streamlined and are a direct reaction to this rambling we get now. It would be refreshing to hear the occassional “hear-hear” from opposite sides of the house(s) but it is just not the done thing. It seems totally party-driven as in what is best for the party survival in the short term.
Tele-parliament.. don’t know yet. I am a technophile but people can be more (or less) persuasive in the flesh. Certainly if less time was wasted in pointless obstructionist debate the houses would need to sit less often. I am sure some restructuring could find those things which could be better done at a distance.
IF Parliament worked to potential then it would be worth the money anyway.
QT or not QT?…. well again, if there were REAL questions seeking information and not as above we could all learn something (see http://www2.parliament.sa.gov.au/static/mediafiles/17_5.mov)
Then again, maybe if more voters saw how poorly behaved or ignorant some of their elected officials were, they would not vote for them! This could be good.
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