What can you actually do? - May 2023
As a new Independent Member of Parliament, some have said ‘what can you actually do?’. I want to let you know how I’m using the tools that I have as a Parliamentarian, guided by the issues my community cares about. Each month, I will let you know about a parliamentary tool I’m using and how it’s nudging change.
Question Time
Question Time is the part of Parliament that people see the most (and it’s not necessarily the best part!). It happens from 2:00-3:30pm on every parliamentary sitting day and it’s one of the few times that all MPs are in the House. There are about 20 questions, alternating between Government and Non-Government, with the crossbench usually getting 3 questions per day.
The Opposition tends to use questions repetitively to drive a particular attack theme home (e.g. ‘Why do Australians always pay more under Labor?’) and the Government asks ‘Dorothy Dixers’ – pre-arranged questions that create an opportunity for the Government to speak on a topic of the day. I may be biased but the crossbench questions are in fact more consistent with the intended purpose of Question Time - to seek further information, to hold Government to account and to draw attention to issues that are important to the community.
The Speaker controls questions and MPs can raise points of order if a question or an answer is outside the Standing Orders. But the need for ‘relevance’ is interpreted very loosely and most of the time the Government does not give a clear answer.
As a crossbencher, I am allocated a question about every 1.5 weeks. I use my questions to hold government to account on issues that would otherwise slip beneath the radar, with a particular focus on the issues that people in Curtin consistently raise with me and matters that affect Western Australia.
So far, I have asked questions about:
whistleblower protection,
IR reform,
Sportsbet political donations,
the Safeguard Mechanism,
gas exploration,
Jobseeker rates, and
youth justice.
There’s a lot of jeering, shouting, point-scoring and theatre in Question Time and on occasion I am taken aback – it’s more like a locker room than a board room.
But it is part of our long Western democratic tradition and at its heart, it serves a purpose, requiring Government to account for the impact of its policies.
Culturally, I think we can do a lot better, using the time for genuine debate. I have been working with the rest of the crossbench to try to improve the quality of Question Time. We are advocating for more specific answers and tighter relevance, to increase accountability and meet reasonable community expectations.
Whether or not this advocacy is successful, I will keep trying to use my questions to get real answers on the issues that matter.
