Page 3808 - Week 10 - Thursday, 27 August 2009
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The purpose of making this change is to increase the level of scrutiny and inquiry during question time and to allow greater exploration of issues at a greater depth. The origin of this—I was inspired by the conduct of question time in Westminster, particularly, and also by the way the New Zealand parliament operates, where answers tend to be shorter and there is a more questioning process that goes on. It engages all members of the chamber in question time, keeps them focused on the questions that are being asked and enables the expertise of all members in the chamber to be shown. One member may ask a question, but another member, by dint of expertise or experience in the chamber, may see an avenue where they want to explore further the question or the answer provided by the minister.
In terms of the impact this proposed reform will have, as I said, it should give all members the opportunity to engage in an issue once it has been discussed on the floor of the chamber. It will mean that ministers, particularly on the supplementary questions, will need to be more concise in their answers, with two minutes for each of them. As I said earlier, overall, there still will be 10 minutes of answering time for the ministers, but it will be more segmented and it will require perhaps more concise answers or less digression, depending on your perspective on the current conduct of question time. And undoubtedly there will be some impact on the conduct of so-called dorothy dixers.
In terms of implementation, I have already touched on the fact that it will be upon the Speaker to ensure the conduct of this new system. I have thought through some of this. It will also mean that the Speaker will need to ensure that there is not a lot of preamble in the potential further supplementary questions. It is clearly not my intent that we now engage in a whole lot more preamble during question time; this should be very much still a focus in the supplementary questions.
I think that the use of this proposed reform will evolve. Perhaps there will be some settling down at the beginning as we see the style of how this might work, but there is room for this to be a good amendment to the question time process. Some members have already flagged that they would like to see this come on in a trial form—see how it runs until the end of the year and then evaluate whether it is working. I am quite open to that.
I think this can work. I have discussed it with a number of people and the potential is there. Of course, we may find that practice throws up some unintended or unexpected outcomes, in which case we should be open to considering whether there is a better way to do this. That is, in very concise terms, the intention and how I envisage it may work. I have informed all members of the chamber of my thoughts on bringing this on. I have heard back from some of the parties. I have not heard from all, but there is an opportunity to discuss that during the debate now. I commend the proposed reform to the Assembly.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.43): The government will be supporting these changes. We think it is always useful to explore different ways in which the Assembly can conduct its business. At the beginning of this term of the Assembly, the government showed
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