‘Scrutiny week’, an opportunity not fully seized by MPs
Ministers, MPs, government officials and journalists have had a hectic week, with the parliamentary schedule choc-a-block with select committee hearings arranged for “scrutiny week”.
A new invention in Parliament’s calendar, the goal of the hearings was to provide an opportunity for MPs to grill ministers and senior public servants for a longer time and in greater depth than is usually possible about their spending plans for the coming year.
Some MPs and ministers got more into the spirit of the week than others, resulting in some highs and lows. Overall it was a new opportunity for MPs not quite fully seized.
Labour Party media spokesperson Willie Jackson was embarrassed on Tuesday morning when he missed his chance to grill Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith after turning up to the relevant select committee meeting four minutes before it closed.
Jackson had thought his opportunity to quiz Goldsmith would come when the minister turned up at a different select committee wearing a different hat later in the day. Not so.
But Jackson was probably not the only one to have his head in his hands – in his case literally – later in the week, during a thoroughly awkward “blue on blue” exchange between ACT Party MP and Economic Development, Science select committee chairperson Parmjeet Parmar and Commerce Minister Andrew Bayly.
Parmar deemed a question asked of Bayly by Labour commerce spokesperson Arena Williams on Commerce Commission litigation in the grocery sector out of bounds.
She dug her heels in grimly even as Bayly made it more and more clear that he, at least, was happy to get into the spirit of scrutiny week and answer the question anyway.
The painful episode ended with Parmar ticking off the minister by reminding him who was chairing the meeting and a patient Williams penning a note to Speaker Gerry Brownlee, asking him to “offer an education session” to new members of the committee and Parmar about their role in holding the executive to account.
The hearing got back on track thanks to Bayly’s candour, it should be said, and ended in a literally table-thumping performance from the minister that had MPs from left and right laughing together.
Select committee hearings work best when Opposition MPs fire informed, precision-guided questions to ministers and officials, and when they in turn are not pedants.
So another low of the week came when senior Labour MP Duncan Webb provided a case study in the weaknesses of the dumb bomb approach, asking Minister for Regulation David Seymour a vaguely worded question about whether Seymour saw regulatory systems as being purely about economics.
Cue an unedifying academic lecture from Seymour on the “tragedy of the commons”, game theory and the problem of the prisoner’s dilemma.
National MPs at times asked engaging and ranging questions, or at least gave basic prompts to better furnish their limited understanding. But they also practised the art of the patsy question – which serve neither the Parliament nor the public.
Tauranga MP Tom Rutherford was one such offender. He expounded a theme of some of the National Party patsies, asking how the Government’s “savings exercise” – or spending cuts – had affected NEMA, the emergency response agency.
Lo and behold, the cuts hadn’t. Yet Rutherford wanted to “flesh this out a little more”. And with little more that could be said about this, NEMA head David Gawn confirmed he was “grateful” for the Government’s benevolence.
Rutherford’s colleague on the Governance and Administration committee, Tim Costley, at times demonstrated that even MPs of the Government party can ask some high-level, forward-looking questions that prompt thoughtful responses about big issues.
But he also proved to be something of a scrapper, testing whether Labour MPs should be allowed to ask certain questions and bickering over his “point of order” not fully being heard.
Scrutiny week was probably a qualified success in bringing greater transparency to Parliament, but it also exposed the limitation that such hearings can only shed so much light on the Government’s plans and priorities at a particular moment in time.
Its success also depends on how our parliamentarians perform.