Speaker Adrian Rurawhe. Photo / Mark Mitchell
When MPs return to Parliament after the election they’ll no longer use outdated terminology like “cognate bills”, “negatived”, or “forthwith”.
These will be replaced by “associated bills”, “not agreed”, and “immediately”.
The dated phrase “that the question be now put” will be replaced by “that debate on this question now close”.
These are just a handful of the changes recommended by a cross-party committee of MPs who have reviewed Parliament’s rules, the Standing Orders.
Every Parliament the Standing Orders Committee of senior MPs looks at Parliament’s rules to think about where changes and improvements could be made. Those changes are incorporated into the Standing Orders that are adopted by the next Parliament.
This Parliament’s review of the Standing Orders was published this week; the report recommended a suite of changes, which were adopted in a debate on Thursday, to take effect after Parliament dissolves.
Some of the biggest changes relate to beefing up the ability of Parliament to scrutinise the Government.
The next Parliament will include “scrutiny weeks”, two dedicated select committee weeks for scrutiny, one for annual reviews of public organisations, the other for scrutiny of the Budget.
“Our expectation is that both ministers and public sector leaders will make themselves unreservedly available… in scrutiny weeks,” the committee said.
The time spent scrutinising the Budget will be significantly increased.
Select committees will also be required to publish “scrutiny plans” at the beginning of the Parliament to cover their planned scrutiny activity for the next term.
The annual reviews of government departments will also become more in-depth, with the creation of a new process to allow “structured hearings of at least three hours”.
One significant area where there will be no change is in updating the protections of three powerful Parliamentary watchdogs, the Officers of Parliament, who are the Ombudsman, the Auditor-General, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
These officers report to Parliament and scrutinise the Government and are meant to have great protection from political interference in order to conduct their job effectively.
The forced resignation of Auditor-General Martin Matthews in 2017 raised questions about whether this level of independence operated effectively in practice. The Officers of Parliament Committee in the last Parliament asked the Government to review the legislation of the Officers of Parliament to ensure it was fit for purpose.
The Standing Orders Committee discovered this Parliament that no such review had taken place, because of “other Government work priorities”.
Some of the changes have been brought about by the increased livestreaming of select committees.
A new standing order clarifies that the Clerk has the ability to “alter the coverage of select committees when warranted” having taken account of the views of the committee in question. It said alterations should only be made in “exceptional” circumstances.
This change appears to have been brought about by cases in which the coverage of a committee has “contained the disclosure of children’s sensitive personal details, allegations that may seriously damage a person’s reputation in a way that is not relevant or necessary, and references to matters suppressed by court order”.
“The coverage has been altered, redacted or taken down to mitigate the harm that its availability could cause,” the report said.
Some alterations had already been made to videos this Parliament, but this new standing order confirms the Clerk has the power to make changes.
The report said edits to these videos may “involve simply muting the relevant part of the recording,” although in some cases someone’s entire oral submission would be removed from the video of the hearing.
“It is important to note that such alterations do not affect the status of the proceedings themselves; the relevant hearings are still public hearings to which no confidentiality attaches. It affects only the communication of those proceedings to the public,” the report said.
Another minor tweak was made to require broad bi-partisan support before a committee could block members of the media (and some others) from broadcasting what occurs in a public session of a committee.
Under the current rules, this can be achieved by a simple majority. The Standing Orders Committee thought this ran the risk of a Government using the majority to block the broadcasting of scrutiny of the Government.
The new changes mean this decision can only be taken by leave, requiring a greater level of agreement than a simple majority.
The committee did not recommend the establishment of a separate Human Rights Committee, which is a popular proposal; however, it did say that a future Standing Orders review might look into the idea.
The committee looked at changing the way Parliament elects the Speaker. The committee looked at adopting a secret ballot for electing the Speaker so that a Speaker popular with all MPs might be elected instead of Parliament simply electing the Government’s candidate.
“The level of change would not seem to outweigh the value of transparency and the public’s right to know how members have voted,” the committee said.
Some of the changes were technical. The Standing Orders in the next Parliament will incorporate the Matariki public holiday as a public holiday for Parliamentary purposes so that no Parliamentary business takes place on that day. A temporary fix to this was adopted this Parliament, the Standing Orders will make it permanent.
One area on which MPs did not agree was on abolishing the title of Leader of The Opposition. Act’s deputy leader Brooke van Velden argued the title is an anachronism in a multi-party MMP Parliament.
“I think this title is outdated, and I know an increasing number of people and members of the public have believed that David Seymour, here, is the Leader of the Opposition. I don’t believe it is actually right that under MMP, where we have multiple parties in Opposition, there is an official “Leader of the Opposition”, because people vote for different leaders of different political parties, and they see those political parties as quite separate,” she said.
Regardless, the committee could not agree on that change. The report noted that “the term has a long history and significance in the Westminster model of Parliament, recognising that the person who leads the largest Opposition party is the symbolic contender for the role of Prime Minister”.
It also said that the term is referenced in pieces of legislation.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
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