Select committee collapses
Parliament’s powerful finance and expenditure select committee has collapsed at its first meeting with accusations flying between the two major parties over whose fault it is.
Under Parliament’s strict procedural rules, the entire schedule for the committee has to be abandoned because a quorum was not obtained. But why a quorum was not obtained is now the subject of fierce debate, with neither side conceding ground.
National MPS on the select committee maintain the meeting was killed because only ‘‘four out of seven’’ Government MPS showed up on time.
Finance and expenditure select committee chair and Labour MP Michael Wood rejected that, saying National’s MPS were standing outside the room, preventing the quorum from being obtained.
Wood conceded that at the start, the committee was short a quorum on the Government side but it had scrambled to find a replacement and the Opposition MPS ultimately prevented the meeting from going ahead.
Now, the prime minister has been forced to weigh in and chastise her MPS for failing to show up on time.
‘‘My expectation is they do their jobs and there are no excuses,’’ she said.
‘‘I absolutely have an expectation that MPS fulfil their roles and requirements while they are in this complex.’’
The committee had a heavy agenda yesterday which included the Budget Policy Statement, the annual review of the Pike River Recovery Agency and a hearing on the last half year economic and fiscal update.
Aside from more than 20 members of the public who had taken time off work to give evidence and submit on some of the items, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was also scheduled to appear before the committee later in the day, as well as Pike River Recovery Agency chief executive Dave Gawn and his officials.
These meetings are some of the only occasions at which ministers are required to front to MPS to be held accountable for their agencies’ business.
A quorum might have been obtained had the National MPS stepped back inside the room.
But serious constitutional questions have been raised over whether Opposition MPS should outnumber Government MPS on such a powerful committee in anything other than the rarest of circumstances. Under standing orders, a meeting has to have a quorum and that has to be obtained no later than 10 minutes after the meeting is scheduled to start. After that the meeting has to be abandoned, effectively because there is too much business before Parliament that cannot be delayed.
Every member inside that committee must either be a permanent member of the committee, or if there is a substitute then they need what is called a ‘‘whip slip’’ from their party’s whip, to show the clerk of the committee they are authorised to stand in on behalf of their party.
Different select committees have different makeups, but the finance and expenditure committee has a Government chair, overseeing 13 members; seven on the Government side and six on the Opposition, so that the Government maintains a majority. A quorum of seven is required, and it’s not uncommon that a committee does not have full attendance on any given day.
However, National’s assigned MPS were all on time, and Senior MP David Carter said their MPS did take a stand by remaining outside the room because too many Government MPS failed to show up.
National Party leader Simon Bridges said he did not know what was happening at the time but he stood behind his MPS’ decision.
He said it was ‘‘absolutely the Government’s responsibility’’ to apologise to the members of the public who had given up their day to submit to the committee.
‘‘Select committees are a core part of our role as members of Parliament. This wasn’t just one, this was a number of Government MPS who didn’t think it was important enough to be there – to get out of bed and turn up to select committee.’’
Carter said National had ‘‘watched the tardiness of MPS on this select committee for all of last year’’. ‘‘They are not treating the select committee process with respect, they don’t do their paperwork or reading before they get to the select committee and National is saying it’s not good enough.’’ He said National was sick of carrying the committee, and Government MPS were not treating it seriously.
‘‘The finance and expenditure committee is without a doubt the most important select committee in Parliament. The National members are doing their homework and we are fed up with watching the Government members treat this committee with complete disrespect.
‘‘They are regularly late, they don’t appear to do their homework, they don’t ask sensible questions and on top of that the committee chair is run very incompetently by Michael Wood,’’ said Carter.
Wood has returned fire rejecting the claim they did not have enough MPS. He said they had six MPS, and Jo Luxton was the one who missed the cutoff time by 30 seconds, because she was a late ring-in for Tamati Coffey, who was sick.
However, Carter said NZ First MP Tracey Martin was late and while Deborah Russell had shown up, she left again to find an MP who could fill in for Coffey and was subsequently late too.
That left Wood, Labour Party junior whip Kieran Mcanulty, Duncan Webb and Willow-jean Prime whose attendance for an 8am start, did not appear to be in question.
‘‘There was a Labour member who was unwell this morning, so we were one short a quorum on the Government side,’’ confirmed Wood.
‘‘There were three Opposition members who chose to stand outside the committee door so there would not be a quorum for the meeting to proceed.’’
Wood said National were simply trying to score a political point and there had been an apparent shift in their strategy this year.
‘‘Members of this committee over the last year and a half, have worked to be a really constructive and quite friendly committee.
‘‘This is a real change in attitude from the National Party – it feels like maybe there’s a need for some distraction this week from what is happening more broadly with them.’’
Mcanulty said he had given a ‘‘verbal’’ whip slip to the clerk of the committee for Luxton, and that had been accepted.
But Wood said Luxton arrived exactly at the 10-minute cutoff time but did technically miss it because her whip slip came in 30 seconds after the deadline.
‘‘The National members there, chose to collapse the meeting.’’