Scrutiny Week Q&A with Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan

This week at Parliament is Estimates Scrutiny Week, when government ministers face select committees to defend their budget plans.

For an insight into the preparation necessary to properly hold a government to account on their budget estimates, The House chatted with a star performer from last year's scrutiny weeks.

Lawrence Xu-Nan is one of a number of MPs in this Parliament who have doctoral-level qualifications. That suggests he holds some brutal research experience that might prove useful in digging into something as labyrinthine and esoteric as the budget.

Xu-Nan's background is in Egyptology. If you can translate and analyse ancient fragmentary texts in dead languages, surely the budget is decipherable.

What is Estimates Week?

"One of the major roles of being an MP and part of the legislature is to scrutinise the Executive.

"How they make law is one part of it, and the other part is how they put together their budget and how they're going to spend that budget. So that is what we're going to be seeing this week as one of two scrutiny weeks, [the other being the Annual Reviews in December].

"We will have hearings with both the minister and the ministry or agency, on how they are going to spend the money that they set out in the budget."

How do you prepare?

"I like to take a very methodological approach.

"The first thing I always look at is the Summary of Initiatives. So within that, what's new? What has the government introduced that's new? What has the government taken away? That's formed the basis of a number of my questions.

"Then you go to the actual Votes. [Note: The sections of a budget are called votes]. Within my portfolio, the two biggest ones are Vote Education and Vote Justice. Getting into the minutia and going through it line-by-line, looking at how the budget is being put together, what money is being spent, what money hasn't been spent."

"I've normally put together a massive spreadsheet of all of the different questions. …I then prioritise it, based on the questions I would like to ask, put into different themes. And anything I don't get to ask is put aside as post-hearing questions."

During Scrutiny Week 2024 you sometimes seemed more familiar with the budget documents than the ministers. You seem to take this very seriously?

"Yeah, I think on one hand I take my role as an MP and as a member of the legislature extremely seriously, particularly around how we hold those checks and balances against the Executive.

"And I think …opposition MPs have a particularly important role in that. …Because of my research background, I'm particularly aware that I need to be able to justify the questions I ask and be able to find very quickly where that source is from. So I'll have it with me all the time."

How many questions do you get to ask?

"To be fair, in most cases when it comes to select committee, let's say Education and Workforce for example, regardless of which political party you are from, most people are pretty collegial when it comes to asking questions; and the Chair is usually pretty good about allocating the time based on requirement, so often the [Opposition MPs] do get a little bit more time [than their strict proportion].

"I think, if we're looking at maybe roughly 15 minutes or 20 minutes for a really long sustained line of questions [from an initial primary question], within an hour [the hearing] might be able to get four or five main questions [or topics], but everyone has the ability to [ask supplementaries] off each other's questions."

Do you coordinate questions between the different parties so that you're not doubling up?

"It's MP dependent, and it's portfolio dependent.

"For example, last year I did a lot of coordination with [Labour MP] Jan Tinetti, as education spokesperson, and I and [the current Labour education Spokesperson] Willow Jean [Prime] have also had conversations around what questions and themes we're going to be looking at this year.

"Being able to support each other, and bounce off each other, is also a really good way of scrutinising the Executive, because I think at its core, the intention here is to hold the Executive to account on their budget, as opposed to finding moments where it's less about a "gotcha" moment and more about everyone and the legislature in general working together to scrutinise."

There are pre-questions, the actual committee hearing itself, and then there's an aftermath. Tell me more about those stages of questions and answers.

"Before the budget is announced, we can put in some pre-hearing questions. And those are a fairly standard list of questions that people may submit. They come from the committee itself to the ministry. So the really important thing about Scrutiny Week (both this week, but also the one in December), is this is one of the few opportunities that we have to be able to not only ask a minister questions (which we can do normally through Written Questions), but to put some questions together to the Ministry.

"When the budget is launched, we are then also able to put in some post-budget questions, …on the basis of what is in the budget, and [answers to those] will be available before the hearing; so [you can] prepare more detailed questions based on those responses.

"The hearing itself is kind of like [Question Time], and that's when we get to ask some very specific questions, but also, I guess in some ways, the more spicy questions.

"After the hearing, depending on whether you have any questions you weren't able to ask, or if new information came about as a result of the public hearing with the minister or with the ministry (or agency), you can put together post-hearing questions.

"[Those] can be fairly substantial, and it also allows the ministry time to digest your questions and be able to give you a more fulsome answer."

Note - Sometimes questions in a hearing can't be answered immediately and Ministers or officials commit to finding answers for the committee afterwards.

"Although I spend a great deal of time and care in putting together my questions… I acknowledge and recognise the fact that not everyone could know every line off by heart - it's just not feasible.

"And sometimes you do need to [let people] come back with some of those answers. And we do see that happen quite often during hearings."

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