Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In terms of the proposal itself, it may be worth relating where we started from in respect of the original proposal. The original proposal that was put forward by Senator Ferguson to the Procedure Committee, which morphed into what we are now dealing with, is somewhat different. The original proposal was: no notice to be given of questions at present, to a situation where notice is given in respect of the question so that all primary questions would be placed on the Notice Paper by 11 am; up to six supplementary questions following each primary question could be asked—and I understand from the original proposal that that would not be from the primary questioner, but could be from a range of other senators from either side of the chamber; two-minute answers to be given to each primary or supplementary question; and answers that are directly relevant to each question.

What was clear from the submissions that were put forward by Senator Ferguson at the time was that, firstly, supplementary questions were to be a positive feature and that they were to be provided in conjunction with the time limits of questions and allow senators to pose questions to elucidate an answer already given. That was the opportunity of providing up to six questions, to be able to drill down into the question itself, and to take up the position that Senator Brown had enlarged upon in the chamber today, which would then provide an information-giving exercise. Of course, that was also linked to the ability for notice to be given, and notice was one of those matters that were going to be linked—and linked in this way with notice meant that ‘directly relevant’ became more able to be ascertained, because the relevant question would be on notice and the rationale would then be inextricably linked to the notice provision for the answer to the question to be with notice and, therefore, should be expected to be relevant to the question.

Without notice, of course, the mischief that Senator Ferguson was trying to avoid is lost in that. So when Senator Ferguson argues that this is an outcome which is an incremental change, when you compare the two it is not an incremental change. Senator Ferguson’s original conception was a reforming of question time through the Procedure Committee. It is fair to say that the government was lukewarm about that proposal. The position we are now at, with notice not being provided, the answer in respect of the questions is in comparison to the current question time—the full seven minutes is still relatively unchanged, supplementary questions have been expanded from one minute to two, and of course the rider of answers being directly relevant to the questions is now still attached. But of course the argument in the paper, of why that would be relevant to include, has been lost. Therefore, the original reforming ideas are somewhat now muddled.

It is fair to say that the practical application of putting questions on notice each day seems better suited to a unicameral system such as the New Zealand parliament. To be frank the government did have some doubts that the proposal would work in practice and meet Senator Ferguson’s objectives of truly reforming question time, lessening of course unnecessary work in departments, improving the flow of questions in the chamber and also ensuring that the system would be trialled to see how it worked to ensure that the issues raised by Senator Brown would be improved. That would be an opportunity for the opposition to question ministers and to question the government in respect of programs or policies that it is pursuing.

The strength of the argument for reform, of course, is now not there. The strength of the reforming issues that Senator Ferguson put forward was highlighted in the original paper that was proposed where, on page 7, it stated:

A significant amount of time and resources in government departments and agencies are put into preparation for question time in areas that may not be required on that day. Public servants from many departments and agencies expend a significant amount of time preparing briefing material for their ministers on a wide range of subjects within their areas of responsibility.

Of course, ministers in the House do likewise. The rationale is that it is not known which minister will be subject to questions on a particular day or which specific area within their portfolio. The briefs, as a consequence, try to cover every possible area of questioning. That was the mischief that was to be dealt with, but it has not come through in the latest iteration at all. In fact, it is not there. One of the main arguments that were put forward originally in Senator Ferguson’s paper is no longer present.

The second part, which goes to the ability for supplementary questions to range around the chamber, as I understood it, and drill down, is now reduced from six to two. You could quite easily say that it has been severely truncated. The rationale for being able to drill down is now gone, because the primary questioner will ask the two supplementary questions. I suspect they will also be written out and that there will not be much change in the procedure that we currently operate under, and they will be prepared in advance of the original question. Time might demonstrate that not to be the case but I will be surprised if it is not. Therefore, that leg has now disappeared in my submission.

The requirement for answers to be directly relevant, as I earlier pointed out, was inextricably linked to the notice provision but is still being retained here. The difficulty will always be that, where a question is provided without notice, the rationale for the minister needing to be relevant to the question was given wide latitude for that very reason. That is now a hook in the current provision without the benefit of the question being put on notice.

Ultimately, that brings us to the point that the benefits that were going to flow and the rationale for relevancy have now been removed as well. I humbly submit that all of the major points that were put forward in the original submission by Senator Ferguson have now been removed. What is left is not a hybrid, not an incremental improvement, but in fact a change to the procedure, with the added bonus of answers being required to be directly relevant without the foregoing notice being provided. The easiest way to examine that, of course, is that question time will still be of one hour’s duration. The length of the interchange between question, answer and two supplementaries is, as my math tells me, seven minutes. The current system is seven minutes, so there is no change to that. Therefore, the only change is that the question is broken into three parts: a question and two supplementaries. The answer is similarly broken up into an answer and two supplementaries. It is still, in my submission, a four-minute answer; it is simply broken up into parts.