Page 3859 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 2011
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One might say, “Question time is sufficient for that, for ministers to be questioned on their portfolios.” However, we do know that predominantly questions come to the major part of portfolios. I will use Minister Burch’s group of portfolios as an example. If we take the Community Services portfolio, it has a whole range of things in it. It has, for example, multicultural affairs, it has ageing, it has women. It is those particular portfolio responsibilities that very rarely get an airing in question time.
It is also worthy to note that the questions that come to ministers from all sectors of this chamber are often on a theme, which means that parties will actually develop a series of questions on that same theme. We have seen it happen in this place, where one minister will get all six questions from the opposition or all three questions from the Greens or the same thing from the backbench here. That means, of course, that the minor parts of the portfolios go relatively unexamined in here. Therefore, there will be now opportunities for members to question ministers on those smaller parts of their portfolios.
The Speaker will of course choose by lot up to five questions. The whole period shall be 20 minutes long. The questions will be, as I say, published beforehand. So there will be, I understand, a supplementary daily program issued. We will see the normal blue delivered to our offices electronically and physically at or about 9 o’clock on a sitting day. However, somewhere between 9 and 10, we will have also delivered to our offices a supplementary daily program which will contain the questions that have been drawn out by lot.
Of course the Speaker will determine whether or not the questions, firstly, are in order and, secondly, are actually relevant to the particular minister on that particular rostered day. If somebody makes a mistake, that will be ruled out of order. That is not to say that the question cannot be asked again later.
Once the questions without notice period has concluded, the Speaker will then call on people who have been drawn out by lot to ask their question and they will be allowed one supplementary. The answers to the question and the supplementary will be limited to two minutes, such that we have a 20-minute time frame and we should be able to get five questions and five supplementaries in.
The administration and procedure committee consulted with Mr Coe about party rooms. Indeed, the manager of government business attended the administration and procedure committee and discussed with that committee, that standing committee, ways forward. In fact, it was his contribution which saw something appear in the temporary standing orders which makes very clear exactly how we are going to do this. If you are going to have a test for a system which will be evaluated further down the track, you need to be very specific about it so that when you come to evaluate it you will evaluate it specifically. So I applaud the contribution from the manager of government business.
I also need to put on the record that the proposal, as put in this motion, was actually carried by the Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure by majority, not unanimously. I also applaud the notion of reviewing it at the end of the Assembly.
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