The House: A Question Time Scavenger Hunt

Phil
Smith, Editor: The House

“Arguments,
inferences, imputations, epithets, ironical expressions, or
expressions of opinion.” It could be a lost verse from the
Rodgers and Hammerstein song which lists “a few of my
favourite things”.

In fact it’s a partial list of
things that questions during Parliament’s Question Time
cannot include. There are also some must-haves, and separate
requirements for answers.

Last week, when discussing
the banned language list, Parliament’s Speaker Gerry
Brownlee said: “I think if you were to apply the full extent
of all of the provisions under this Standard Order, there’d
be very few questions that could be asked in the
House.”

I suspect that Brownlee was employing a little
hyperbole in his refusal of a complaint from New Zealand
First MP Shane Jones, but it got me thinking. Just how many
of the rules are broken in your average Question Time? It
surely calls for a scavenger hunt.

Roles, rules and
expectations

Sometimes on RNZ’s The House we
give a lot of attention to Question Time – especially to the
rules that govern it. Yet Oral Questions are the most public
forum for one of the Parliament’s key roles – keeping a
check on government, so they are deserving of some scrutiny
too.

Done well, Question Time is much more than
political theatre. Ideally, it is when our representatives
sharply evaluate our rulers, and our rulers honestly defend
their actions. Arguably it is not often done
well.

Over the decades, in an attempt to force
successive governments and parliaments to live up to the
purpose of Question Time (and of Parliament), MPs have laid
out some exacting rules and expectations.

In our
scavenger hunt, we ran out of time on-air before we
exhausted examples of rules being broken. We found
inferences, epithets, irony, discreditable references,
opinions and more. You can listen to the audio version of
this story for examples. We had no time to consider the
compulsory elements of questions and answers, one of which
is an actual answer.

The actual rules and
practice

Below are some of Parliament’s rules for
what should or should not occur during both oral questions
and answers. We have omitted the rules for processes, and
focused on content.

For more detail on the process,
see the Standing
Orders.

To explore various Speakers’
interpretations of the above rules you can read Speakers’
Rulings.

For a discussion of actual practice see
Parliament’s ‘bible’, see Parliamentary
Practice in New Zealand.

388 Questions to
Ministers

Questions may be put to a Minister relating
to-

(a) public affairs with which the Minister is
officially connected, or

(b) proceedings in the House
or any matter of administration for which the Minister is
responsible.

389 Questions to other
members

(1) Questions may be put to a member who is
not a Minister or the Speaker, relating to any bill, motion,
or public matter connected with the business of the House,
of which the member has charge.

(2) Written questions
may be put to the Speaker relating to any matter of
administration for which the Speaker is
responsible.

390 Content of questions

(1)
Questions must be concise and not contain-

(a)
statements of facts and names of persons unless they are
strictly necessary to render the question intelligible and
can be authenticated, or

(b) arguments, inferences,
imputations, epithets, ironical expressions, or expressions
of opinion, or

(c) discreditable references to the
House or any member of Parliament or any offensive or
unparliamentary expression.

(2) Questions must not
seek a legal opinion.

(4) Questions must not refer to
proceedings in committee at meetings closed to the public
until those proceedings are reported to the House or,
subject to Standing Order 116, to a matter awaiting or under
adjudication in, or suppressed by an order of, any New
Zealand court.

396 Content of replies

(1) An
answer that seeks to address the question asked must be
given if it can be given consistently with the public
interest.

(2) The reply to any question must be
concise and confined to the subject matter of the question
asked, and not contain-

(a) statements of facts and
the names of any persons unless they are strictly necessary
to answer the question, or

(b) arguments, inferences,
imputations, epithets, or ironical expressions, or

(c)
discreditable references to the House or any member of
Parliament or any offensive or unparliamentary
expression.

(3) Replies shall not refer to proceedings
in committee at meetings closed to the public that have not
yet been reported to the House or, subject to Standing Order
116, to a matter awaiting or under adjudication in, or
suppressed by an order of, any New Zealand court.

397
Supplementary questions

(1) At the discretion of the
Speaker, a supplementary question may be asked by any member
to elucidate or clarify a matter raised in an oral question
or in an answer given to a question.

With the rules
above, you are now equipped to have a Question Time
scavenger hunt yourself, or maybe even play Question Time
bingo. Happy hunting.

*RNZ’s The House, with
insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made
with funding from Parliament’s Office of the
Clerk.

© Scoop Media