Mike Elliott: Questions without Notice

Extract from Hansard

Legislative Council
31 October 2001

Mike Elliott
Leader Australian Democrats
Member of the Legislative Council

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That the Standing Orders Committee of the Legislative Council prepare amendments to the standing orders to provide for a significant increase in the number of questions without notice asked each sitting day.

I do not intend to speak at great length about this motion at this stage. I have had private discussion with many members of this place and it would be fair to say that there has been concern about the number of questions that are asked, and answered, in any one question time. My staff have looked at the statistics and it appears that on average there are about 11 questions per day being asked and, technically at least, being answered in this place. It is worth noting that not only is the number of questions being asked and answered relatively low but the number of days we are sitting has also been in decline over recent years. For example, in 1970-71 the average number of sitting days was 75; in 1981-82, 68 days; and in 1994-95, 70 days. Then it has dropped away in the last three years: 48 days, 44 days and 47 days. We are sitting fewer days and the number of questions being asked per day is relatively low. In my own experience I managed to ask only one question in question time in the three sitting days last week. There are a lot of issues that come before us as members of parliament, and some of them are adequately handled by letters to ministers or letters to departments. Many questions-

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: Many questions that are asked are not aimed to bring the government down, although you would not think that by the reaction you sometimes get from ministers. They are questions which simply seek a straight answer. I usually come into the average question time with a backlog of anywhere between a dozen and 20 questions that I wish to ask about a whole range of issues.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: You already have the ministers supplying questions to you. You do not have any problems.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: If you were not asking the dorothy dixers, I would be able to ask more questions. It is of great concern to me (and I receive feedback from members of the public) that question time has deteriorated in a range of ways. It would be fair to say that it has not always been good. I remember that when I first came into this place one minister in particular (John Cornwall) started answering a question, then looked up at the clock and thought, `I have 10 minutes to go. Yes, I think I can run question time down.' In fact, I saw him run it down from much further out than that. He was a past master at wasting question time.

These days the Leader of the Government in this place has taken that minister's place. If you ask a question of most of the other ministers they tend, generally speaking, to give relatively short answers. Sometimes they even answer the questions. But they tend not to get caught in the `running the clock down' routine.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: I think those sorts of things could all go into the mix. It is not my intention to debate the whole issue in absolute depth tonight. What I am asking for in this motion, for those who have read it, is that the Standing Orders Committee be asked to look at amendments to the standing orders to provide for a significant increase in the number of questions without notice.

The Hon. M.J. ELLIOTT: If you look at the parliaments around Australia, you see that a number of different procedures have been adopted by them to try to address the issue, and they have not addressed it in the same way. Some have addressed it informally, where a lot of questions without notice are provided to the minister an hour or so beforehand so that they have some chance of preparing a response. I think that happens informally, as I recall it, in the federal parliament. In other parliaments a range of different restrictions are imposed.

At this stage I am not going to lobby for one particular track but I am saying that, when a member of this Council, which has only 22 members, is lucky to get one question up in some weeks (and we are not sitting all that many weeks), I do not think question time is providing the opportunity to explore a range of issues as it is meant to enable.

What this motion asks is not that any particular standing order be changed in a particular way: it asks that the Standing Orders Committee look at the current procedures and come back to this place with recommendations. Some of the responses may be a relatively informal process. Some may be more formal, in terms of putting a time limit on questions and/or answers without a suspension of standing orders. In one of the parliaments, I believe, there is a fixed number of questions each day. If you do that, the incentive for ministers to try to run the clock down, which I know some do, is gone, because they will know that at the end of the day there will be 12, 13 or 14 questions, regardless of how long they talk. Straightaway, that gets rid of that incentive to waste time.

As I said, it is not my intention to promote one particular answer to this. All members in this place, privately at least, admit that question time is not working well. The number of questions and answers being handled is not good. Something needs to be done about it, so I ask all members to support a motion which asks the Standing Orders Committee to address this matter.