Question Time at Parliament is the closest thing it has to a game like Quidditch.
A game with a lot of complicated rules which is still weirdly free-form and surprisingly brutal.
Question Time also has a fair bit of quaffle, and more than its share of beaters and bludgers (or at least bludgeoners). And, just like on the pitch, Question Time is a contest where the tactics constantly evolve, with counter tactics shifting to respond.
National Party MP Nicola Willis in the General Debate Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
Informal Fallacies
The tactics of Question Time vary widely but frequently they borrow from what logicians call informal fallacies of logic. Think syllogisms in ripped jeans.
Both questions and answers can lean into false equivalencies, false dilemmas, flawed causalities, shifted goalposts, arguments from repetition and oh, so many more.
There is also enough casual torture of statistics to make mathematicians cry.
A recent favourite is taking the funding for a long-term project and dividing it by the impacts effected in the initial period. Like complaining at a restaurant that you spent big and only got bread; but doing so before the servers bring your meal.
But one clever tactic heavily used in Question Time recently may have suddenly disappeared this week when it was discovered that the tactic goes both ways.
‘What does he say to Katie?’
On Tuesday National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis was quizzing the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson when she employed a recent Question Time go-to tactic.
“What does he say to Katie, who responded to the Prime Minister's Facebook post about the Government's 1 April changes to benefits and entitlements saying, ‘What about the middle income earners? We both have full-time jobs. There is no relief because we aren't on benefits, but still get stung by the increases everywhere.’
The logician might classify this debating tactic as an Appeal to Emotion, specifically to empathy. They might also say it borrows cleverly from the Appeal to Poverty.
However classified, it is a very effective political tactic and a longstanding tradition that all parties tend to use in opposition.
While a Minister answering the question might confidently slap down an MP, showing anything but empathy to a member of the public (especially a suffering one) risks looking callous. The appeal to emotion puts the minister in a difficult position.
It doesn’t even matter whether the member of the public is real or not; and when these kind of quotes come from unverifiable sources (and echo political talking points), some might wonder whether they are sock or meat puppets.
Labour MP and Deputy PM Grant Robertson in the House Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
‘I see your Katie and raise you a Becks…’
This week though, in a shift of counter-tactics Grant Robertson took his responses from exactly the same bag of tricks, responding:
“I express sympathy for that person, but, then, I would refer that person to meet up with Becks, who wrote to the Prime Minister to say, ‘Thanks so much for all you and your Government has done. The COVID assistance has kept me in business without a doubt, and I've been around long enough to appreciate that National would've turned a blind eye to the likes of my little business.’
One Twitter wag this week suggested a change to Parliament’s rules on this.
Proposal for Standing Orders Review: MP's quoting a "member of the public" from Facebook are required to place a sock over their right hand, and make appropriate gestures with it as they speak #nzqt
— Idiot/Savant (@norightturnnz) April 5, 2022
‘Once more unto the breach’
But it’s been such a useful tactic that Nicola Willis decided it was worth a second crack, quoting an different critic's Facebook post.
Most MPs come to the House with a carefully scripted list of questions, or an 'option tree' to guide their next move. It must be difficult to spontaneously rethink the plan.
Sometimes, even if a tactical approach falls flat or the answers to their whole list of queries are given in response to the first one, they tend to stick to the script to the bitter end.
Nicola Willis' second attempt was similarly answered with another matching quote.
As if to make the point that he could play 'quote-tennis' all day Grant Robertson went on quoting from that person at length until the Speaker asked him to please stop.
…and now for something completely different
And so... on Wednesday during Question Time when those two regular interlocutors matched up again that particular tactic was absent from Nicola Willis' playbook.
In the ever-shifting tactics of Question Time it’s just possible that (for the moment at least) the convenient quote from a member of the public might be off the menu.
