There is a popular
misconception that the apparently clubby nature of Parliament means that all
MPs, in Government or Opposition, have pretty much the same access to
information. That has never been the case, even since the introduction of MMP.
The Government of the day not only holds power, but also controls access to
information. While there have been some improvements over the years - the
Public Finance Act and the Fiscal Responsibility Act have made the state of the
Government's finances more transparent, and the overall annual Budget process
more open and predictable - the control of official information remains
overwhelmingly under the control of the Government of the day. And, as
information is power, they regard access to it jealously.
All of which leaves
Oppositions at a massive disadvantage. When parties first leave office, their
outgoing Ministers have a huge, immediate advantage over their successors in
that they have all the information about what has been going on to that point.
But that advantage is temporary - usually, former Ministers' information loses
its currency after about six to nine months as the new Ministers get their feet
more fully under the table, and start to take control of their portfolios.
That reality will
have hit the National Party a few months ago. Its information channels will have
dried up, and will not be refilled until they next win office, or the few
months beforehand when their win seems likely, and sympathetic officials start
quietly slipping information their way.
So, as with all
Oppositions, National now has to start doing it alone, without the power of the
Government bureaucracy to answer their queries or provide specialist advice.
That is where the current controversy about the numbers of Written Parliamentary
Questions becomes relevant. Parliamentary Questions, carefully crafted and
camouflaged to disguise their true intent, coupled with a judicious use of the
Official Information Act, are the primary weapons of an Opposition to get the
answers it needs to do its day to day job of holding the Government to account,
as well as the information it needs in the development of its next election
policy.
It is a
time-honoured tactic, making Labour‘s criticism of it a little hypocritical.
Moreover, as the largest Opposition ever, it is not unreasonable that National
should be asking more questions than ever before. Yes, the process is time
consuming for the public servants who have to prepare the answers for
Ministers’ consideration, and it is tedious for Ministers to have to spend
several hours each week poring over the replies before approving them and
signing them off. But, by definition, it is not the Opposition’s job to be
helpful to the Government.
Besides, every now
and then Parliamentary Questions strike gold. This year, it was the Questions
process that brought Clare Curran’s Ministerial career to a close.
Discrepancies in Written Questions replies caught out Shane Jones and his
failure to disclose 61 meetings, and the ongoing skewering of Iain Lees-
Galloway is largely because of the inadequacy of his answers to Parliamentary
Questions.
Parliamentary
systems of government, where the Executive is part of the legislature, as
opposed to systems of government where the Executive is separate from the
legislature (like the United States, for example) tend to be winner-take-all
systems. Governments govern and Oppositions are largely bystanders. But, a
Parliamentary system also means Governments are more directly accountable to
the legislature and can be changed by changing the composition of the
legislature at an election, as opposed to again, say, the United States where
both Houses of Congress can be controlled by one Party, while the President in
whom Executive power resides, can be from another Party and still retain power.
The immediacy of our
Parliamentary system means Governments will always seek to control the flow of
information as much as possible to protect their situation, and that
Oppositions will always seek every opportunity they can to obtain the information
they want. To pretend otherwise, and to complain when they do so, is as
churlish as it is woefully naive.
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