If you’re familiar with stories from The House you’ll know that we regularly mention that, against all appearances, governments in New Zealand are subordinate to parliaments. You might even say we bang on about it.
To recap: Parliament has a variety of jobs. It provides an executive, it passes laws, permits and approves revenue and spending, and generally keeps a close eye on what that executive (the government) gets up to.
Government’s in their turn, often seem to struggle with this arrangement. They often forget they’re not the boss and regularly resent or avoid scrutiny. It’s an eternal tug-of-war.
The Beehive wrapped up by its big brother, Parliament. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
There are many ways that Parliament attempts to maintain reasonable scrutiny of the Executive, for example by asking thousands of written questions (which are mostly answered by the government ministries).
Also by asking oral questions, though some executive members have new and creative definitions for ‘answer’.
A lot of oversight is done via select committee processes. Particularly the regular Estimates and Annual Reviews processes, which are mammoth undertakings.
There are also the usual debates and discussions in the House, and occasional extras like ministerial statements and urgent debates.
The rare debate
This article is about that last category - the urgent debate. Much requested, seldom approved and given a ruling this week, maybe even less frequent in future.
Parliament’s rules especially allow for Urgent Debates to be requested so long as the Speaker agrees the proposal meets three criteria: It must be “a particular case of recent occurrence”, it must be a matter of administrative or ministerial responsibility, and it must “require the immediate attention of the House and the Government.”
In short, it must be recent, be the government’s problem, and be worth the time.
Urgent debates are requested a lot more often than they are allowed. Over the previous five parliaments only 17.8% of requests were allowed. Some Speakers are more generous than others so the per parliament numbers vary quite a lot. The graph below gives numbers by parliament, not by Speaker. The Speakership changed hands mid-parliament in January 2013 (Lockwood Smith replaced by David Carter), and in August 2022 (Trevor Mallard replaced by Adrian Rurawhe).
Results of Application for an Urgent Debate, by Parliament. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
The low success rate has various likely causes. Partly it is because Speakers can tend to lean towards being a tad protective of their own party colleagues, some more than others. Lockwood Smith is generally considered the least protective of recent Speakers, followed by Trevor Mallard.
There are other reasons as well though – the main reason for rejections is probably ‘hopeful’ requests. Many requests come across as political ‘show’ rather than genuine attempts.
Predicting urgent
It is easy to presume that many requests are so unlikely to be allowed that even the MP proposing them is unlikely to devote much time to preparation for the possible debate. I remember an urgent debate last term which, when it was agreed to, caught out the MP who requested it, finding him unprepared and floundering. It was a case of be careful what you wish for.
NOTE: By convention, no one knows until the Speaker announces it, whether an urgent debate will happen. The Speaker, who receives requests and makes the decision, traditionally gives no party a heads up that an urgent debate is even in the offing, let alone imminent. That’s what makes them something of an occasion, because MPs (other than those from the party requesting the debate), have very little time to prepare.
Sometimes an MP might ‘read the runes’ though and see a likely issue arising and be ready. Carter, Mallard and Rurawhe all gave video intros to the day ahead, which played prior to the House sitting. In their video briefings the speakers often estimated how far the House would progress through its agenda that day. A particularly clever MP might do the math and figure the estimated progress was an hour ‘short’ of what might be expected – a clue that an urgent debate was in the offing, though not on what topic.
Gerry Brownlee, Parliament's current Speaker Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Causes for denial
So far this Parliament, five urgent debates have been requested – and five have been denied. That might sound harsh, but it’s not far off the average 17.8%.
In fairness, one of those – on the Gaza situation, which would never have satisfied the ‘it’s the government’s problem’ criteria, was preempted on the day by a government motion on the same issue. It would have been a bad look to ignore the issue entirely. And a government motion also gives the executive the chance to frame the debate by choosing the wording of the ‘question’ under discussion.
Denials are usually on the basis of a topic not being either topical enough or not the government’s problem. Speakers also sometimes argue that another debate can satisfy the need – for example in the circumstance where, if the urgent debate doesn’t occur, another debate scheduled that day will allow speeches on exactly the same topic. For example if the House is engaging in one of its long annual wide-ranging discussions (especially something like the Reply Debate – in response to the yearly kick-off Prime Minister’s Statement.)
On Wednesdays, for less crucial issues, Speakers have also sometimes pointed to the pending General Debate – though if I remember correctly, on occasion an Urgent Debate on something significant has been followed promptly by a General Debate.
Redefining urgent
It’s important to remember that Speakers’ rulings are like common law – they move the goalposts and shift the future interpretation of rules, acting as a framework for future rulings.
All that preamble brings us to Tuesday this week, when there was a request for an urgent debate on an announced change in the funding criteria for disability services.
It was declined, maintaining Gerry Brownlee’s perfect strikeout percentage.
It’s worth noting because the Speaker’s ruling on it opened new ground – acres of it. The Speaker’s denial of the request relied on that third reason – that another impending debate would suffice. So far, so good.
The diversion from the typical reason was when the impending alternative debate the Speaker offered as a reasonable alternative will begin – in April. In at least three weeks time. And it's not a short debate; it might not get to this topic until May.
The Speaker was saying, in effect, ‘I agree this is urgent enough to discuss, so wait a few weeks to do so’. Not exactly urgent.
So, why bring this to your attention? Mostly, because it’s a good excuse to chat through the rules around urgent debates – but also because the Speaker Gerry Brownlee managed to blow an impressive new hole right through the current interpretation and application of those rules.
The new ruling provides more opportunities for Speakers to deflect urgent debates and might plausibly make that recent 18% success rate look hopeful.
Parliamentary oversight of the executive might be a constitutional absolute, but it's not always an easy road.
Note: This article was edited to remove a paragraph that wrongly suggested that the impending Annual Review Debate wasn't ideally suited and would allow a government to decide to skip a ministerial area. In fact if the allocation of ministers to that debate is a Business Committee agreement. If agreement can't be reached an opposition felt scrutiny was being stifled they could default the debate back to addressing sectors in order, whereby all ministers would potentially be subject to scrutiny. It was also edited to correct the numbers on urgent debate success (from an average 14.4% to 17.8% when better data was used for calculation).
