Parliamentary question time, as regular viewers would know, is unavoidably brutal. There is no more difficult forum in which to speak. In front, there are organized interjectors. Behind, there are colleagues shouting back. Each member of the audience, whether from the other side of the parliament, one’s own side or the press gallery is an expert on what should have been said better. Then there’s the speaker of the parliament sitting in judgment about whether what’s said is permissible under the standing orders. That’s what ministers and shadow ministers have to take for granted. It’s the crucible in which our leaders and potential leaders are tested and it ultimately helps the Australian people to know who has the toughness to cope with the challenges our country must face.
Its specific purpose, though, is to enable MPs to hold ministers to account. If they want to, ministers can avoid the media or they might have something on their leader that makes them indispensible. The one thing they can’t do, though, under a Westminster system, is avoid facing up to the parliament. That’s why Question Time matters. It’s the one mechanism which guarantees ministerial accountability to the people. When ministers refuse to answer opposition questions and use questions from their own side to launch lengthy attacks on the opposition rather than to explain their own actions, the parliament is demeaned and, more importantly, democracy is compromised. When this happens, it’s the opposition’s job to do everything it can to ensure that the government acts more reasonably.
Over the past fortnight, the Rudd government’s most accomplished minister, Julia Gillard, has been under sustained pressure over school spending decisions (as part of the government’s so-called Building the Education Revolution programme) that defy common sense. These include giving $2.5 million to Abbotsford public school in Sydney to replace four perfectly serviceable existing classrooms with just four new classrooms; and giving $250,000 to a Queensland country school with one pupil that’s about to close. Decisions like this have caused a $16 billion programme to blow out by $1.7 billion that’s been taken from other educational programmes and from social housing. Gillard could have dealt with these by making the perfectly reasonable point that in such a large and complex programme there would inevitably be some hiccups. If she had assured the parliament that she would work with the relevant state education departments to demand and to get better outcomes, no fair-minded person could reasonably have objected. Instead, she dismissed the particular problems that were put to her as “nit-picking”, insisted that the opposition had no right to ask questions about the programme because it hadn’t fully supported it and, finally, tried to drown out concerns over the maladministration of her programme by recycling scare stories about workplace relations.
Although every political party has a natural tendency to believe that it can do no wrong and that its opponents can do no right, it’s almost the mark of a mature politician not to claim a monopoly on virtue. Ministers using question time, not to tell the truth about the government, but to tell lies about the opposition eventually damage their own credibility. The challenge for the opposition, under such circumstances, is to alert the public to the government’s tactic. This means points of order, gag motions and, if that doesn’t get the message across, regrettably, disruption of the parliament. Last year, the government tried to institute Friday question time only without the prime minister present. This would have meant that opposition MPs were stuck in Canberra while the prime minister was campaigning in marginal seats. Bringing a cardboard cut-out of Kevin Rudd into the chamber resulted in the suspension of several MPs but it made the point and the Friday sessions were scrapped.
This week, the opposition decided that it would no longer tolerate evasive, abusive or just plain silly answers, such as the prime minister’s 13 minute lecture to open question time on Monday. After Gillard’s next answer was a contemptuous caricature of the opposition’s policy, I was warned for interrupting the deputy prime minister’s camera angle. Inexplicably, I was then suspended for occupying a chair so that I could talk to my frontbench colleagues without giving further offence on this ground. Perhaps it was retrospective punishment. Still, it seemed a rare over-reaction from Speaker Harry Jenkins who has chaired the parliament with more firmness towards ministers than is usual in an office wholly dependent on the government.
It seems that the government, too, might have started to get the point. Ministerial answers were much shorter on Tuesday and on Wednesday the prime minister managed to give his standard answer on the global financial crisis in just six minutes. It’s hard to imagine a government as relentlessly partisan as this one keeping itself in check for long. So far Rudd government ministerial answers have averaged almost four minutes each and question time has run for over an hour and a half. By contrast, in its last term, Howard government ministerial answers averaged only two and three quarter minutes and question time lasted just over an hour. There was no lack of political aggression but there was normally at least some prelude about what the then-government was doing right as well as what the then-opposition was allegedly doing wrong.
A few years ago, the then-manager of opposition business Wayne Swan called for time limits on ministerial answers. In 2006, when she was manager of opposition business, Gillard told the House Procedure Committee that answers should be limited to four minutes as they are in the Senate. Ministers have not practiced in government what they preached in opposition. This week, the opposition formally moved in the parliament to change the standing orders but was voted down by the government. Shorter answers would ensure that ministers sharpened their message and should ultimately improve politicians’ standing. The real need, though, is for an independent speakership. It couldn’t quite be the House of Commons model because our parliament is too small for the speaker’s parliamentary seat not to be contested. Even so, it would be possible to alternate the speakership each term between the two main parties and to require a super majority to overturn rulings. Not establishing one might be considered a small failing among John Howard’s many achievements but the issue should certainly be revisited by the next Coalition government.