Dozy MPs need more freedom to speak up

All good French teachers will tell you that language is like a muscle – if you don’t use it, it’ll wither and die. Most skills are like that and the parliamentary arts of MPs are no different. Last week we got an example of what happens when MPs let them fall into disuse.

The wrong bill was tabled in the House and passed within hours under urgency before a journalist discovered that, instead of passing a few well-flagged tax changes, Parliament had inadvertently established a multibillion-dollar loan scheme.

The blame rests mainly with the Parliamentary Counsel Office, which mixed up the bills. MPs should always be able to rely on what they’re debating being the correct bill, but that doesn’t get them off the hook completely.

The real bill, the one soon to be signed into law, was sitting on the table in the middle of the House. MPs could have read a physical copy to make sure nothing had changed from the copies circulated via email earlier that day.

One, David Seymour, did in fact check the bill, he spotted the loan scheme and noted it in his speech. Other MPs could and should have spotted that there was something quite different about the bill they were debating. They could have kept speaking, chewing up time, whilst they worked out what had gone wrong. Once they’d worked it out, they might have sought leave to have the correct bill substituted and passed.

It’s the second parliamentary bungle in the past three months. An attempt to create ‘‘safe zones’’ around abortion clinics failed after MPs forgot to call for a vote on an amendment to remove safe areas from the abortion legislation bill.

The amendment had actually been split into two parts. The first part, to remove the definition of safe zones from the bill, failed, suggesting there was a thin majority in favour of establishing them.

The second part, which was to delete the part of the bill that set out how safe zones would be created, was successfully expunged after MPs forgot to call for a conscience vote.

This means the final law is in the inelegant position of explaining what a safe zone is, but doesn’t actually explain how to set one up, and why.

The two bungled bills shows what happens when parliamentary skills slip into disuse as they have done over the last quarter century.

Part of the problem is MMP. Under the former FPP system, MPs’ power and opportunities for advancement came from representing the views of their local constituents. The party was important, no doubt, but without a party list an MP couldn’t rely on brand alone to get them over the line.

The advent of the list has tethered MPs much more strongly to their parties and their leaders. Nearly every party in Parliament, with the exception of the Greens, delegates much of the responsibility for ranking the party list to the leader.

An ambitious MP is well advised to forever please the leader, who will reward them with an ever higher list ranking.

The leader’s position is articulated by party research units, which draft the pointy-headed missives MPs are forced to read in the chamber as they debate bills into the night. It’s not uncommon for MPs to read near-identical speeches. Independent thought is discouraged.

The advent of the list has tethered MPs much more strongly to their parties and their leaders.

This makes constitutional sense. Party votes are more important than electorate votes. What right do MPs have to take an independent line from the party that put them in Parliament? But it also creates disappointing and sleepy lawmaking. A Parliament packed with legislative automata is little more than very expensive theatre. It very evidently does not provide very good legislative scrutiny.

There have been moves in the right direction. Some debates have been changed to allow MPs more speaking slots (for shorter amounts of time). This gives them more back-and-forth opportunities to really probe a minister or issue.

Another possible change would be the creation of a backbenchers-only version of the parliamentary free-for-all known as General Debate. This could be on the cards as early as the next Parliament, if the current crop approves it.

If done well, it could give MPs the opportunity to share more frankly their own views, which some only really get to do during the maiden and valedictory speeches that bookend their parliamentary careers.

It’s true in politics you can’t put too high a price on loyalty, but after multiple parliamentary bungles, perhaps leaders will begin to weigh these against the obvious parliamentary costs of MPs’ blind partisan obeisance.