Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm presuming that everything has been concluded with respect to those previous bills and we're at a gap in business. I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Melbourne from moving the following motion immediately—

That standing order 104(a) be amended to read: An answer must directly answer the question.

People want governments to answer questions, especially during something called 'question time'—not to dodge the question, not to talk about something else, not to answer a question that they wish they were asked but to answer the question. Ministers have huge power. We have been trying all week to get a straight answer about why the minister for environment is approving coal projects. Each time we ask the question—we've got a question time coming up again today, which is why it's critical to get an answer to this—

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, the member for Melbourne. Did you seek leave to suspend—

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I moved that standing orders be suspended. We have been trying all week to get a straight answer from the minister for the environment about why they have been approving coal projects. We ask a very tight question about it, and we get a minister who talks about renewables, talks about things that happened 15 years ago and talks about anything else other than coal and gas, even though they know it is critical. It is the thing that we are asking about. It is time for straight answers. It is time to answer the question. This is a simple test. We've had it not just this week but year upon year upon year. And it has been Labor and Liberal; this isn't just something that one side does. Every time people come to this place on behalf of the people of this country and try to get a straight answer from a minister, the minister talks about something else. People are sick of it. What we've found out is that it's permissible. It's in the rules to do this, which is why it has gone on for so long. So what we need to do is change the rules, if that's the case. We need to change the rules to require that, when a question is asked, you get the question answered. It may not be the answer that you like, but it is an answer to the question. At the moment, what we know, as we have seen year after year after year, is that, when you ask them a question, they can talk about anything but in their answer. It doesn't matter how tight your question is. It doesn't matter how much preamble you cut off. If you ask a really simple question, you don't get a simple answer.

Ministers have huge power. Ministers of all political stripes have huge power. The point of this place should be to be able to hold them to account and get an answer to how they're using that power, to understand why in the middle of a climate crisis a minister wants to approve new coal and gas projects. But it seems that no matter how simple and straightforward we ask the question, we don't get a straightforward answer about it. People have had enough. So, if it's within the rules to do that, then we've got to change the rules, and that's what this will do. It is very simple. The new words that are proposed to be included are: 'that an answer must directly answer the question'. Most people in this country would probably think that's what question time is for. So I'm calling on the other establishment parties who for years have just dodged the questions that they're asked to now change the rules so that they'll answer the questions. It's a simple test. Are you prepared to answer the question that the people are asking you and give a straight answer?

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is seconded. There are a lot of reasons why people don't like politicians, but probably way up on that list is that so often they don't answer questions directly. How often have we seen media interviews where politicians of all stripes will dodge and refuse to answer very basic and direct questions? Surely, the one place where ministers should be at least compelled to answer questions directly—actually answer them—is in question time and in parliament. It's an incredibly low bar. In fairness to the Labor government, it has not just been Labor enforcing this rule; it has been years of the coalition government doing it as well. I would argue that the question for both the Labor government and the coalition opposition is: are you going to clear this bar—probably one of the most basic bars for how parliament should function? Are you going to agree to a change in the rules that requires ministers to answer questions directly? It's pretty basic.

Right now—let's be frank—question time, by and large, is an enormous and extraordinary waste of public resources and everyone's time. On the one hand, often you have government members get up and ask cutting questions, that—I'll paraphrase here—go along the lines of, 'Why is this government the best government in the history of governments?' We get a direct answer to that. Then, on the other hand, we'll get questions, sometimes useful questions, that ministers refuse to answer directly at all, including, recently, the Minister for the Environment and Water, who failed, repeatedly, to give a basic response and directly address why this government keeps approving coal and gas mines.

It's a basic reform. It's a basic request. I think if the public were asked—it's a pretty basic pub test—'Do we think that, in question time, when a minister is asked a question, they should answer it directly?' 99 per cent of people would say yes. The other one per cent, I suppose, would be government and opposition members and their staff.

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion to suspend standing orders and amend standing orders so that questions must be actually answered in question time. I'm new to this place and, coming in last year, new to politics. There's a lot to learn. Some of the things that you learn here make sense and have been built up over the course of the development of our democracy over hundreds of years. Other things don't make sense and are out of step with the opinions of the general public. The inability of a parliament to draft standing orders in a way that means questions are actually answered is one of the things that doesn't make sense.

The crossbench has been working to try to reform question time, so that some common sense applies, since the beginning of the 47th Parliament. In trying to improve the rules of question time so that we get answers—or what the average person would consider to be answers—we've written to the Leader of the House, we've written to the Manager of Opposition Business, we've written to the Speaker, we've written to the Procedure Committee twice, we've made a submission to the Procedure Committee's current inquiry, and a number of us have also given evidence in a private hearing to the Procedure Committee. Despite all of this work within the rules of the House, we are not seeing any sign of reform in line with community standards. We've met with both sides of the House to try and drive this reform.

The way this amendment is drafted may not be perfect, but I think that it should not be beyond this parliament to come up with a form of words that actually requires people to give a commonsense answer to questions that are put in question time. Both sides of parliament are used to a style of questioning and answering in question time that means you can avoid it. It is considered clever within the culture of this House if you can avoid giving an answer. But this is not how the community sees it. It really detracts from the trust in our politicians if people do not give straight answers to really simple questions. So I think this is an urgent matter. It is something that our parliament needs to deal with.

We've had about 83 question times in this parliament, with about 20 questions in each of those question times. That's a lot of questions and a lot of time that we've spent listening to answers that often, if not usually, don't actually answer the question.

So I support this motion. I think that we can really do better as a parliament to rebuild trust in the community in what we are doing here as leaders and use question time to actually hold the government of the day to account.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise in support of this motion. I do believe it is particularly urgent, given the conversations in this House in recent times around the definition of 'relevance'. I think the fact that we're having to have those conversations goes to the very point that 'relevance' is too broad a definition when it comes to answering questions. Indeed, if you even look at the dictionary definition of 'relevance', it refers to something being closely connected or pertinent to or having something to do with the question. I don't think that's good enough for the Australian public. If you look at the definition of 'answer', it is a reply to a question or a correct response.

I agree with the member for Curtin's position that this is a community trust issue. This government purports to have a view that it wants to do politics differently. I believe that the Leader of the House actually does adhere to that position. I think that now is the time, with community sentiment and social licence for this kind of change, that the government should be seriously considering whether standing orders as they stand are relevant to our community, whether they stand up to scrutiny within our community and whether they meet community expectations.

I would also add before I finish that, while trust is an enormous factor here—and as a former journalist I have lots of experience in asking politicians questions and not getting answers—there is also the simple matter that the government actually could take some ground here by understanding that it has an opportunity to answer questions directly. It might take some ground in the public popularity stakes by stepping into this space, because I think this is what our communities want. I think that the definition as it stands is too broad. The lack of ability to ask follow-up questions makes it very difficult to get simple answers to questions that the public want to know.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise in support of this motion to suspend and amend the standing orders such as to require ministers to actually answer the questions asked of them in this place. My constituents of Kooyong want their representative, me, to be able to ask questions of ministers in this House. They expect the government to answer their questions. They deserve that respect. All we ask is that the House improves its own procedures in a way which is modest and reasonable and which requires the ministers of this government to give appropriately detailed and accurate responses to the questions asked of them by the opposition. I commend the motion to the House.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion. This country faces real issues, but question time does not deliver answers to those questions that we have to face as a country. It delivers a show for the benefit of the media, but it does not deliver to the young people, to the people in the audience or, frankly, to the Australian people. It is the major parties' shouting match. It is unedifying, and it actually is incredibly detrimental to people's understanding and belief in politicians and in our democratic processes. I had a dinner last night with 30 women who were from around the country, women leaders, who spent 90 minutes in question time and basically asked, 'What on Earth was that all about?'—because it was completely pointless in terms of benefit to the Australian people. It is self-indulgent and wasteful. I think this is an opportunity where we should demand answers to questions. It is not unreasonable that in question time we get reasonable answers to questions. That is what the Australian people expect of us, and that's what we should expect of ourselves.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne for bringing on this suspension of standing orders so that we can address this question. I think it has been a problem for some time. What is the value to taxpayers of question time? That is what this question really goes to. The origin of question time is that it was established to ensure that there was an opportunity to ask questions of the government of the day for, ultimately, the benefit of the Australian people. There was a time when, in fact, government also used question time to actually make announcements, policy announcements, that really would benefit, again, the Australian people. Unfortunately, we've moved to a question time now being this sort of parody process. It's a farce, ultimately, where we don't really get responses to questions. There might be peripheral addressing of the topic or a word. Section 104 of the standing orders sets out on replies to questions that an answer must be directly relevant to the question. Unfortunately, 'direct relevance' has been interpreted that, as long as a minister's answer responds in a peripheral way to any word that might have been used in the question or in any preamble, that can still constitute a directly relevant answer.

I'd have to say that is not what the Australian people expect. I think it is not the kind of standard and answer that the Australian people would like to hear. I appreciate that sometimes the questions are hard to answer, and there shouldn't be a problem with a minister actually identifying that and saying, 'I will take that question on notice and I will come back with an answer on that.' It's not just this idea of gotcha moments in question time. If it's not possible to answer the question genuinely, honestly and directly then there is the opportunity to take it on notice and come back at a later date. Instead, what we get is three minutes of diversion and talking about everything and anything but the actual question.

So I think this amendment makes a great start in trying to amend the standing orders so that we actually require a direct answer to the substantive question, not just broad relevance. So I welcome this opportunity. I hope the government will take this on and consider this because whilst in opposition they found incredibly frustrating the lack of direct answers by ministers. So now, in government, there is that opportunity for them to set a new standard, to improve the quality of the debate in this place, to give taxpayers value for question time and to give the children and other people in the public gallery that come and watch question time an opportunity to see real accountability and real debate occur.

Coming from the legal profession as a barrister, where debating and asking questions is incredibly important in court proceedings, I have found the process of question time quite disconcerting and in particular the fact that the answers are often so far from the mark but also the repetitive nature of the gotcha questions that often come from the opposition. It's really looking at question time as a performative opportunity to be adversarial, to perform for the cameras, as opposed to genuinely giving something of value to the Australian people.

I would urge all the members in this place, but in particular the government and the Leader of the House, who's here to hear this debate, to think carefully about where we can we take question time. How can we improve and progress this system and actually give some benefit and value to the Australian people?

Andrew Gee (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion. It is a very important motion for the constituents that we represent. I think that, when our constituents send us to this place and we have the opportunity to ask questions on issues affecting our nation but also our local communities, our constituents want to get answers to those questions. A really good example of that occurred earlier this week, when I asked about a project in my electorate called Dixons Long Point and whether the government would support that project and what happened to the $27.8 million that was sitting in the kitty for that project. I asked, 'Where has it gone, and why can't that money be spent improving the existing road even if the government doesn't want to spend another dollar on that project?' Unfortunately, we just didn't get an answer on it. What happened was the answer, I would say, degenerated into petty pointscoring between the government and opposition, which was very disappointing because the constituents of our area want to know what's happening with that project and were really disappointed, I think, that we didn't get the information that we needed. So that's why I'm supporting this motion, and I think the government should be supporting it as well. As the member for Warringah stated, those members who are in government were once in opposition and they would've been supporting this. I know it's now perhaps a case of poachers turned gamekeepers, but, from the point of view of our constituents, we want these questions to mean something. I know that I speak on behalf of my crossbench colleagues here: we want to turn question time into answer time and make it count for the people that we represent. They expect nothing less.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Normally, I'd respond after the seconder, but I wanted to make sure that I didn't use too much time and stop other people from speaking, which means I now have very little time! I will firstly refer to the examples that were given, because I think a couple of them are not accurate reflections of what happened. I refer to the example that the member for Calare just gave, in terms of the answer that was provided about that road. I haven't had a chance to grab the Hansard and check, but my recollection is that the response from the minister was that there had not been enough money provided by the previous government to fund that project. That's a direct answer. Even on what's proposed in this motion, I think it would've been easily satisfied in that particular question. Similarly, with the question that the member for Ryan had asked, which was referred to by the member for Griffith—the framing of that question was 'How does the minister justify those decisions?' and part of the minister's justification was what's been happening in renewable energy projects. In terms of a direct answer, I think those ones all stacked up.

As to the balance of what happens in question time, there is a different standard that is used for questions that are on notice, compared with what you would expect for questions that are without notice. Some parliaments around the world—New Zealand, for example—have a system where notice is given to each minister of the particular narrow topic areas that are going to be asked about. The first question is completely with notice, and then the questions that follow are without notice. It involves ministers turning up with very specific knowledge of the direction that things are going to go. It's a different system.

We have the flip side here. Yes, you're right—there is more range for ministers when something is completely without notice. Sometimes you'll get the straight one-word answer that is directly on point. Sometimes, in the context of something provided without notice, ministers will provide what information they have that is relevant. But I should also add, because I think we have to be honest about the balance across the chamber, we have questions that are not questions. I think it's fair to say that everybody who's participated in the debate—and I include myself, when I've been asking questions—has asked questions that are effectively statements with a small question at the end for the purpose of making a point. Similarly, we have points of order that are not points of order—they are an attempt, halfway through, to make the point again, regardless of whether or not someone is being relevant, even though people know that what's being responded to was part of the question. It's about getting that point of emphasis. That's the balance that happens across the chamber at the moment. We have questions that are not really questions, we have points of order that are simply moments to get another grab, and then we have answers that simply have to be relevant to the topic area, which is a different standard to what we demand when a question is placed on the Notice Paper. That's the total balance. If we're simply proposing to vary one corner of that, it's not a true reflection of what's going on in question time at the moment.

I don't think any of us would want to defend what things degenerated into yesterday, but I have to say I don't think it was the fault of the current standing orders. I respect what's been put and I respect the reasons why it's been put, but I do think we are missing part of the point of what happens in question time if we don't also look at the broad range of what's currently allowed in the way questions are asked and the way points of order on relevance are more often than not taken.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question before the House is that the motion be agreed to.