Turn up, stand up: Learning from MP’s mistakes

An embarrassing kerfuffle in Parliament's debating chamber on Wednesday provided fun lessons on how the House works; or at least, how it is meant to work.

An embarrassing kerfuffle in Parliament's debating chamber on Wednesday provided fun lessons on how the House works; or is meant to.

It began with a surprising and unusual period of silence in the House during Wednesday's extra morning sitting. Debate on a bill had ended slightly early (for the lack of an MP to speak for Te Pāti Māori), and the House moved to the next item on the order paper.

The new bill to be debated wasn't inspiring or even controversial; it was a 'regulatory systems' bill, updating various small things in Social Security. The problem was no one stood up to speak on it. Cue uncomfortable silence - something pretty rare in the chamber.

Every bill that goes through Parliament has an MP in charge of it. Government bills are only shepherded by ministers.. When a government bill is announced in the House, the minister in charge of it stands up to 'take a call' (i.e. speak) and formally proposes that the bill be read, in this case for the first time.

The Action

The minister in charge of the bill up for debate was National's Louise Upston, but she was missing from the chamber.

Her office later revealed that she had been in a Cabinet Committee meeting. She had, as she put it to RNZ, "stuffed up" by not having her speech sitting ready in the House in case someone else had to speak on her behalf. She wasn't alone in the screw-up, or the worst offender.

It is not rare for ministers to be unavailable to speak on a bill. It can happen for various reasons. Any other minister can speak on their behalf, just as any other minister can answer questions on their behalf - it's one of the advantages of the executive being envisaged as a collective.

In the House, the silence was broken by Labour Whip Arena Williams, who jumped to her feet to prompt the assistant speaker in the Chair to make the necessary call. As you would expect from a Whip, Williams knew Parliament's rules well enough to realise the implication of there being no minister rising to take the first call.

On the governing side of the debating chamber they seemed slower on the uptake. None of National's official whips were in the House, but they were being covered by Tim Van de Molen and Dana Kirkpatrick, both of whom seemed caught out by the silence.

After a few seconds, Kirkpatrick moved down to the Table (in the centre of the debating chamber), where she took a copy of the Bill (that no-one was yet talking about), and passed it back to Melissa Lee, who did nothing with it (which was very odd), but more on that in a moment…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details