Ministers under microscope in Parliament’s new ‘scrutiny week’

Monday, 17 June 2024

This week, Parliament will begin a new era in which ministers and public servants will be hauled over the policy coals for hours at a time by opposition and backbench MPs: it’s called scrutiny week.

It is a new week set aside in the Parliamentary calendar that allows for select committees to grill ministers and senior public servants in estimates hearings.

MPs are required to arrive in Wellington as per usual, but Parliament will not be sitting. Instead, select committees will be asking the questions and ministers will be answering them - for hours on end in some instances.

While committees have been required to develop “scrutiny plans” and most will have developed “structured agendas” in order to guide questions, it will give carte blanche for the MPs on the committees to scrutinise decision-makers on a wide range of matters. It is designed to enable sustained questioning of ministers and their senior officials.

This week the meetings are all “estimates” hearings, which are forward-looking. They involve how Government is spending money now or the plans for spending in the future. So, for instance, Finance Minister Nicola Willis will be interrogated by the finance and expenditure committee for two hours straight on Wednesday morning.

The idea of scrutiny week came after the Parliament’s last review of standing orders - the rules and rules and regulations that govern the conduct of Parliament and are overseen by Speaker of House. The change has been deemed sufficiently important that Parliament has reduced it sitting calendar from 30 weeks to 28 in order to fit two scrutiny weeks in a year.

“The idea is that essentially it's treated like a sitting week. So members are expected to be here in person. In fact, the meetings have to occur in person, except in exceptional circumstances. And then ministers and public servants are expected to make themselves available to committees in that week,” James Picker, a clerk assistant in the Office of The Clerk said.

Picker said the standing orders review - conducted every three years - found that there was not enough time to hold ministers to account in a thorough way.

“The standing orders committee in its report talks about ‘sustained lines of questioning’. So the ability for chair people to support members to really dig into the detail and go down a line of questioning with a minister or chief executive: ‘This is the thing I really want to know about really want to get into the detail of what you're doing here’,” he said.

“Fundamentally it’s about accountability of the government to Parliament, which should be enhanced by doing it in this new way. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes,” Leader of the House Chris Bishop told The Post.

“It’s a good move, and shows that Parliament can slowly improve its rules when everyone works together”, shadow leader of the House Kieran McAnulty said.

“And we’ve been constructive about it - the draft sitting calendar originally had scrutiny week down for last week. I pointed out that’d mean no government minister could attend the start of Fieldays so they might want to adjust it. That would’ve been good for the opposition but we didn’t want to start things off that way.”

“Any chance for ministers to front up in person to members in a public forum is a positive thing - for Parliament and our democracy,” said McAnulty, who was minister in the Ardern and Hipkins Governments.

The report produced by the standing orders committee before the election under previous speaker Adrian Rurawhe was blunt in its assessment of some select committee practices and committees’ ability to hold ministers and senior public servants to account.

“Scrutiny is not systematically, reliably robust. Meaningful scrutiny by select committees should be a given, and should drive better governance. At present, scrutiny could not realistically be described in these terms,” the review of standing orders said.

“Scrutiny of the executive is often cursory, particularly when viewed against the magnitude and complexity of government activity and spending under review.”

While the review has not been explicitly modelled on Australian Senate estimates where ministers an public servants can be grilled for hours on end, it does allow for much more in-depth questioning, even at the risk (or opportunity) of political grandstanding by committee MPs.

“Parliament is a political environment. It could never be otherwise in a lively, competitive democracy. We recognise that scrutiny has a political dimension to it, particularly when the decisions and actions of Ministers are being scrutinised,” the report said

But the public interest and accountability wins out.

“Ministers and members have an interest in understanding what is being achieved with public money and how well the country is progressing towards important outcomes.”

“I think that one of the strengths of the New Zealand Parliament is the standing orders review that's done every three years,” Picker from the Clerk’s office said.

“The ability for members - and the fact that it's done before an election - the ability of members from all the committee all the parties to come together and look at what's working, what can be tweaked to work even better, what's not working and how to solve it and then working together on a solution,”

“It’ll be a busy week.”