2 May 2019

Feeding the hand that bites you

From The House , 6:55 pm on 2 May 2019

You may think that the opposition are the group in Parliament whose job is to ‘hold the government to account’. You’d be wrong. The group in Parliament with the job of holding the Government to account is Parliament. All the MPs, not just the opposition.

Parliament is like New Zealand’s Board of Directors. The board selects from amongst its own a CEO (the Prime Minister), and a senior management group (the Ministers), who run the company day-to-day. But overall control is retained by the Board.

Occasionally the House does something that makes that relationship very obvious. It did that this week, but it was pretty quiet, and you might not have noticed.

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The Chief Executive of NZ, Jacinda Ardern Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox

Labour’s Iain Lees Galloway stood in the House on Thursday and said something quite boring, but also uncommon, and very instructive. Feel free to skip the details:

“I move, that a respectful Address be presented to Her Excellency the Governor-General commending to Her Excellency the alterations to the appropriations and capital for the 2018/19 financial year in respect of Vote Audit and Vote Ombudsmen, and the estimates of expenses and capital injection for the 2019/20 financial year in respect of Vote Audit, Vote Ombudsmen, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.”

Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway

Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox

Motions in the House are seldom snappy, but this one is important. It’s the House agreeing to fund the ‘Officers of Parliament’; the Ombudsman, the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (and their staffs).

It happens before the budget because as the Speaker Trevor Mallard pointed out, “The Government, the Minister of Finance doesn’t decide how much money they get. It’s decided by a cross-party committee in Parliament.”

To recap, the House of Representatives supplies a government and then keeps a check on its work. To help with  oversight the House employs these specialist watchdogs - the Officers.  

The Officers of Parliament are funded at the whim of the House, not the Government because their job is to be a potential thorn in the flesh of the Government.  

Chief Ombudsman Judge Peter Boshier (center), Deputy Ombudsman Compliance  and Practice Emma Leach (left) and Chief Inspector OPCAT Jacki Jones, (right) speak to the Law and Order Committee about the illegal restraint of at-risk prisoners.

Chief Ombudsman Judge Peter Boshier (center), Deputy Ombudsman Compliance and Practice Emma Leach (left) and Chief Inspector OPCAT Jacki Jones, (right) speak to the Law and Order Committee about the illegal restraint of at-risk prisoners. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith

It wouldn’t work if every time they reprimand or embarrassed a government there was the possibility that their funding might suffer as a result. Government can’t rid itself of these usefully meddlesome folk, because they work for its boss - Parliament. 

The whole exercise is a useful reminder that the Government is not ultimately in charge. 

When the House briefly debated this funding motion a second odd thing was evident. Two of the three speakers (who all applauded the increased funding for the officers), were ministers. They were the very people the watchdogs watch.

Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway

Iain Lees-Galloway, Deputy Leader of the House. Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox

So you could say that they were asking to be watched by an even bigger dog. Which is, on the face of it, strange. It’s like they’re saying ‘please sir, could my potential tormentor be more capable and larger?’ 

Iain Lees-Galloway (Minister for Workplace Relations, Immigration, and ACC), described the Officers as, “vital contributors to New Zealand's parliamentary democracy, supporting the House in [holding] the executive to account.”

Green Party MP Eugenie Sage, Minister of Conservation

Green Party MP Eugenie Sage, Minister of Conservation Photo: VNP / Phil Smith

Green MP (Minister for the Environment), praised the work of the Ombudsman's office in backstopping the Official Information Act which she called “one of the linchpins of our democracy”. 

She seemed positively enthusiastic that the Ombudsman would be better able to whip her colleagues and herself into shape.

“The role of the Ombudsman here in investigating 'declines' [of requests for information] by agencies and Ministers to release information and ensuring that our Government is responsive, is efficient, is effective, and is accountable is a very important one. I think this increase in resource will go a significant way to improving the capability of the office there.”

MPs are strange like that - capable of championing both their own administration and the role on the Parliament in overseeing it. 

The motion and address were approved and will now be added into the full budget to be released in four weeks.