— The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order?
— Yes, relevance. It was a very simple, direct question. This answer is not related —
— The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat. The minister has just begun his answer and he is relevant.
— On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just because the Leader of the Opposition wants a yes or no answer does not mean that he can demand that from the minister. Ministers are…
— The Leader of the House is debating the issue. Does the Leader of the House have a point of order?
— My point of order is that disorderly points of order are being regularly taken by the Leader of the Opposition —
— The Leader of the House will resume his seat.
…
– Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. With respect, this is the fourth time we have asked this question. It requires a simple answer, and the Deputy Prime Minister is making a mockery…
– That is not a point of order. There is no point of order and if the member for Griffith continues to take that type of point of order I will deal with him.
The “member for Griffith” gives it away — that’s an exchange not from last week but from three and a half years ago when Kevin Rudd was trying to get Mark Vaile to answer a question about AWB’s bribery of Saddam Hussein.
I’ve been watching or listening to Parliament since the early Hawke years and I can never recall Question Time not being made a mockery of. An experienced Gallery hand who has been here in various roles since the Hawke years couldn’t either. I’d be willing to bet Government Ministers have always been annoyed at frivolous points of order and Opposition MPs eternally frustrated at the unwillingness of Ministers to answer questions, although Alan Ramsey told me last year he thought Fraser’s blocking of Supply and the Dismissal permanently soured the ALP on the idea of being fair in Parliament.
What’s missing, everyone agrees, is the wit and spontaneity of yesteryear, although that primarily seems confined to the Whitlam era, when Gough and Jim Killen would amuse themselves bantering and playing sometimes elaborate jokes. It may be that MPs on both sides today are less witty than their forebears, but it’s also the case that given Question Time is now broadcast, and the stakes for anyone making a mistake are much higher, both sides now try to keep it as scripted as possible.
Since cameras were allowed in, Question Time has become a key element in shaping the television networks’ political reporting when Parliament is sitting, making control of it crucial. The purpose of Question Time is now to (a) avoid embarrassment and (b) to get a crucial grab on the evening news.
This involves a vast commitment of public resources, by the way. Every morning during sitting weeks, perhaps a quarter of the entire Canberra-based public service is busy checking the media, ringing around for advice, taking instructions from ministerial advisers and furiously writing, editing, emailing, collating and clearing Question Time Briefs or Possible Parliamentary Question Briefs to ensure Ministers have an answer for every possible question and talking points for a Dorothy Dixer. The vast bulk of those briefs are never opened in anger.
It’s a hideously expensive charade of accountability.
If the Coalition is serious about improving Question Time — and that’s a big if — here’s some suggestions:
- Get a cleanskin, like Jamie Briggs or Alex Hawke, to run the issue. Christopher Pyne and every other former Howard-era Minister is automatically disqualified from the debate. But new MPs don’t have the problem of flagrant hypocrisy.
- Commit to introducing changes if elected. Don’t just vaguely commit to “better Parliamentary standards” like everyone since Edmund Barton has done. Make specific promises about reforms you’ll carry out if elected to government.
- Don’t adopt the Senate system. Have you ever listened to Senate Question Time? It’s even more scripted and ritualistic than the Reps. Ministers get a Dixer, blather on for their allotted time, are sat down by the President, immediately get asked a supplementary dixer, repeat the dose, get sat down again, then get a further supplementary dixer with which to punish anyone foolish enough to tune in.
- Scrap questions from Government MPs. Good Ministers can still get their message across answering Opposition questions. Have one hour of Opposition and independent questions.
- Switch the cameras off for Question Time. This may not make Ministers answer questions any better, but it will stop them being so focussed on what might appear on the evening news. Alternatively, move Question Time to earlier in the day so it occupies a less prominent place in the media cycle.
- Grow up. Half-baked walk-outs, Tony Abbott hovering in shot, Wilson Tuckey, Bronwyn Bishop — none of them do your case any good.
In the end, though, the days of Question Time actually being about accountability are long gone. Strengthening the Parliamentary committee system and FOI, and insisting on more prompt replies to written Parliamentary questions, will do far more to strengthen executive accountability than anything happening in the daily pantomime at 2 o’clock.
Who’s to Blame? Politicians or The Press Gallery? (shamlessly copied from my blog this morning)
So Question Time this week has, depending on your point of view, either been rollickingly funny Canberran WWF, or a farcical shemozzle of childish political point scoring.
I’ll take a little from column A and a little from column B on this one.
Watching Julia Gillard rubbing the opposition’s noses in their own droppings was kinda funny, I giggled along with everyone else when it looked like Harry Jenkins (Speaker of the House) was going to get up and punch someone and Bernard Keane surely has to win best Question Time tweet ever with “Bronwyn shrieks, flaps her wings and looks for a cathedral to perch on.”
So, yes, fun, fun, fun, but the opposition’s whining about the mean unfairness of the government’s manipulation of Question Time, while lacking a certain credibility, does have some validity.
Question Time is supposed to be a forum for the government to show some accountability, where they have to provide answers about the implementation of policies and plans for the future. The Rudd government is absolutely not the first to use it to humiliate the opposition (hi to Paul Keating if you’re watching) and Howard, Abbot & Costello et al were equally guilty of this, but not only does it totally defeat the purpose of the thing, it also plays a large part in the public perception of politicians as petty and childish arsechokers (arsechoker: someone whose head is shoved firmly up their own arse and then chokes when the sphincter is unexpectedly tightened).
It’s easy to blame the politicians themselves for this, but Tony Windsor
(independent MP for New England) made the point on Radio National Breakfast this morning that the media also needs to take some of the rap.
Governments take such delight in humiliating opposition members in parliament in a large part because it gets such good headlines, which detailed policy debate does not. Also, they know that time spent writing up Julia’s latest bon mot is not time spent digging about in the stimulus spending. They’re playing to an audience of around 200 in the press gallery, and as long as the applause (in the form of soundbites and column inches) keeps coming, they’ll keep putting on their show.
And from the media’s point of view it’s an easy ride. Journalists who don’t want to have to wade through policy papers and analysis can fill an easy couple of columns reporting on the latest Question Time shenanigans, file their copy and be the first one to the bar after work.
So who’s to blame? Well, I think there’s enough to go round, but the press gallery are the ones with the power. If, instead of gleeful giggling over Question Time performances, they started demanding genuine debate and real answers to questions, the politicians would have to knuckle down. The reverse is not necessarily true, if politicians started taking Question Time seriously there is no guarantee that the press would follow suit.
The media, and the Canberra Press Gallery in particular, has a responsibility to the public, they are there to watch and report on the doings of parliament. They should be decrying rather than encouraging politicians to treat the parliamentary process with contempt.
The Fourth Estate, if it wants to be take seriously by the public, needs to take seriously the responsibilities of it’s profession.
And we, as readers and consumers of media, need to ask more of them than we currently are.
I remember a 3rd grade school excursion in Canberra to see Question Time. We were an unruly class and apparently some parents were worried the typical example set by our elders would make us worse, but the teachers just smiled. The antics so astounded us that for about 3 days afterwards we were embarrassed into near silence and actually did some schoolwork.
Years later I was to notice that about three quarters of the actual legislative work is crammed into the last two weeks of the parliamentary year.
Time could be the key here. Soundbites amuse the masses but a full three course meal of buffoonery just bores away the image of politicians as entertainers.
Jane, what if there was a law requiring the broadcast media, if it plays any part of a question and answer, to play the exchange in its entirety. It could be justified on grounds of not taking parliamentary words out of context or something of the sort.
Bernard, how about just limiting the answer time to two minutes, including one minute of silence to prepare the answer. The timing of the minute silence to be restarted whenever anyone in the house breaks the silence.
“I’d be willing to bet Government Ministers have always been annoyed at frivolous points of order”. I don’t follow the proceedings of the Federal Parliament as closely as I do the SA State Parliament (I used to work in SA politics and never got out of the habit of reading the Hansard) but I can assure Bernard that many ministers LOVE frivolous points of order. Kevin Foley in SA is a classic example. His standard MO is to answer any question he doesn’t like by attacking the Opposition (nothing unusual there, sure) and be careful to throw in a word like “hypocritical” or another example of ‘unparliamentary language’. This will lead to some Opposition member jumping to their feet with a point of order. Five minutes of chaos inevitably follow, and the end result is that no one particularly notices that Foley hasn’t answered the question.
Several years ago, Premier Rann was out of town and Deputy Leader Foley stepped up as acting Premier. During a press conference which was turning ugly, Foley seemed shocked to discover that his tried and tested tactic didn’t work when he was outside the Parliament and there was no Speaker to protect him. His subsequent attack on journalists was as counter-productive as it was desperate, and the media made many references to Foley’s gladness when Rann got back to Adelaide to resume his usual duties the following week.
James, I think the push needs to come from the press themselves, rather than the parliament, (and I should re-iterate that the above was shamelessly copied from my blog this morning, this was not at all intended to be a reflection on Bernard’s reporting),
It is not in any government’s interest to change the status quo – it works too well for them.
It is, however) in the press gallery’s interest to change things. Bernard is not the only one to write about the frustrations of covering politicians who duck and cover whenever they are confronted with questions they don’t like.
I would like to see a joint push from the credible media to force politicians to deal directly with questions and analysis. If enough reporters refused to publish or broadcast interviews with unco-operative politicians, and enough of the press gallery stopped playing along with QT shenanigans and started smacking both sides around seriously, without the undercurrent of glee, politicians might find that they need to take policy more seriously and stop making cheap hits on the opposing side their top priority.
QandA got this off to a shaky start, but it’s needs backing from the full force of a united press gallery behind it.
Force them to fit their questions and answers into the length of a tweet.