House of Representatives
Thursday 13 May 2021

By leave—I rise to make a short statement and to thank the member for Bonner, the chair of the Procedures Committee, for his thoughtful and very worthwhile contribution to today's debate. I thank him and members of the committee for their leadership in delivering a blueprint—a bipartisan blueprint—for change to question time.

Question time is a visible opportunity to hold the government of the day to account and, due to its public nature, it can also be a moment for political opportunism. It's dynamic and a unique part of our democratic process, and is the most public part of the parliamentary day. But for most Australians, question time is the only work of ours they see. It's how the majority of people reach a judgement about this House and its work—and it's not a pretty look.

For this reason, the committee wanted to begin this report by gauging the variety of attitudes towards question time. As we've heard, submissions were called for in 2019, and I want to read one submission—submission 16—to the chamber:

When watching Question Time on television I see many highly paid people behaving extremely badly. Instead of thoughtfully and respectfully debating policies, MPs use Question Time as a political fight club: shouting at each other, being aggressive, bullying, name calling, mocking others, sledging and generally being abusive.

…   …   …

Instead of asking intelligent and probing questions on behalf of their constituents, the whole exercise has been dumbed down and 'weaponised' in order to score points. To 'answer' a question from the Opposition, the respondent stands up and yells something nasty for three minutes.

This is not a one-off opinion. Discontent with the process was a common thread in submissions.

The survey received 3,465 responses and we were shocked to find that more than 95 per cent of people surveyed indicated they thought the House should change the way question time works. Many feel that the process is not currently achieving its purpose, calling it a 'waste of time', 'just theatre' or a 'farce'. Concerningly, a strong theme that emerged in these responses was the perceived failure to answer questions. People also highlighted the need for ministers to answer questions truthfully and to keep their answers relevant to the questions.

These are troubling and widespread attitudes, which spurred the committee to develop a list of bipartisan recommendations and guidelines that seek to improve the conduct of question time overall and, importantly, to restore public faith in our political process. We all understand that question time means different things to different people, but the committee found that the prevailing theme across submissions and comments were that the purpose of question time is to hold the government to account for its policies and actions. Many people don't believe that accountability is being achieved under the current structure.

Accountability starts at the top, which is why I want to share with the House one particular recommendation that the committee is putting forward in this report. In recommendation 4, the committee recommends:

The Committee recommends that the standing orders be amended so that the Prime Minister cannot refer a question to another minister to answer without first speaking to the matter of the question themselves.

Media reports have shown that this Prime Minister has avoided giving an answer at question time approaching 200 times since taking office. The Hansard also shows over 62 times when he has given a part answer before deferring to someone else. It's these recommendations and other recommendations, such as banning the dreaded dorothy dixers and ensuring that there is a trial for mobile phones in this chamber, which will lead to more accountability and a better question time. In order for Australians to have faith in our democratic process they must be entitled to answers from their leaders, especially from the Prime Minister, who has shown consistent disregard for the transparent and informative process that the Australian public is calling for.

The road to a better question time starts at the top, but it doesn't end there. This report details 11 key recommendations that I hope will lead the House to set a new standard for question time as a purposeful and relevant forum, one that benefits and is respected by the Australian people.