You might think that at Parliament MPs spend most of their time debating and investigating legislation. You’re probably right, but they also spend a huge chunk of each year investigating Government spending.
And not just at question time, but in literally hundreds of select committee hours spent pouring over the books, quizzing bosses about ministerial and departmental performance, quizzing ministers about their plans, and debating in the House.
Debating both how money was spent and what was got for it; but also how it is planned to be spent. MPs have spent much of the last two weeks arguing the latter, and will spend yet more time next sitting week doing more of the same.
The Report of Select Committees on the 2019/20 Estimates, plus from the other end of the cycle, two volumes of Reports on Annual Reviews. Together they're nearly as tall as the 'Beehive'. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
This current debate is the second time the House has discussed this year’s budget. The first debate started in May when the budget was announced and took 15 hours. That was a very general debate.
This time the House is arguing over the specifics of a thick tome of reports from the various select committees after they spent a couple of months each holding their own investigations of minister’s budget plans.
Each committee focussed on their own specialist area, which broadly coincides with the ten budget sectors, each one made up of a number of 'votes' or specific areas of ministerial responsibility.
This current debate, the Estimates Debate is divided into those same sectors.
The Estimates Debate is also the committee stage for the budget legislation, and like all committee stages it is debated and voted on in parts, again those same sectors. So in reality it is ten separate debates with a vote at the end of each of them.
What MPs are actually doing is deciding whether or not to keep each part in the overall budget. Spoiler: they will.
Technically the House could eliminate parts of the Government’s budget during this debate, but doing so would indicate Parliament had lost confidence in the Government and would probably lead to an election.
And technically (because the committee stage is the last chance to fiddle with a bill), the Government is also allowed to make a tweak here or there to the budget at this stage. But that would also be pretty unusual.
Adjustments to actual spending will wait until the end of the budget year when actual spending is outlined in the Supplementary Estimates and then confirmed in the Appropriations (Confirmation and Validation) Bill, about six months after the end of the financial year.
Basically Parliament runs an endless cycle of planning, approving and reviewing spending and performance that takes about 18 months a year. Around and around and around.
The Select Committees are about to begin their Annual Reviews of last year's performance.
So you see, they do spend as much time arguing about money as about laws.
