Sir Geoffrey Palmer gives evidence to the Parliament Bill Select Committee. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Parliament's Standing Orders committee continues to hear oral submissions on its triennial review of Parliament's rules - the Standing Orders
These rules outline how Parliament functions, including the number of questions during question time, when the House meets, and how long an MP can speak for.
Because the opportunity to review or change these rules only happens once per Parliamentary term, the committee lays largely dormant (with occasional meetings when needed) until the last year or so before the dissolution of Parliament. Its membership is made up of Parliament's procedural role-players - the Speaker, the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House, the Shadow Leaders of the House, and all the party whips (with junior whips often attending too).
Two weeks into the oral submission period, those MPs have heard from a number of individuals and organisations such as the Clerk of the House, the Parliamentary Council Office, the Auditor General, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. One recurring theme that was consistently raised in those submissions was an appetite for reforms to Parliament's select committees.
Select committees are smaller groups of MPs that put legislation under the microscope, and facilitate the hearing of submissions on that legislation from the public.
On 5 November, MPs heard from the man who led the creation of those select committees, former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
Sir Geoffrey is no stranger to the public submission process. Anytime a select committee is dealing with a piece of legislation concerning our constitutional matters, or the operation of Parliament, you can probably put your money on the 33rd Prime Minister of New Zealand showing up to share his thoughts.
Last week, those thoughts included concerns about how strained Parliament, and by extension select committees are, with increased public engagement in the legislative process.
"This Parliament, the House of Representatives, is very small," Palmer told the committee. "You take the executive out of it, the number of MPs that are available for scrutiny is quite small and you've got 12 subject select committees to which legislation can go and the result is that you have a very uneven workload. I think measures have to be introduced by the standing orders to allow the committees to not hear every piece of evidence but to hear the ones that the committee thinks can help them the most.
"It's a great thing that the democratic process of New Zealand causes so many people to make so many submissions but they are overwhelming you and the MPs in this country are terribly overworked compared with internationally because the members of Parliament were set in about 1996 and the numbers haven't been increased but the population has increased."
Reviews of Standing Orders happen every three years, but Sir Geoffrey argued that next year's iteration will be especially crucial given what he perceives to be an incremental erosion of democracy globally.
"The Parliament has been reduced in public esteem gradually but surely and for that to be a risk, the processes adopted here have to be authentically democratic and they're not because of the strains you are under. Life is getting terribly difficult for any legislature anyway, democracy around the world is in a state of decay and challenge."
If democracy is indeed in decay, and trust in institutions like Parliament is declining as Sir Geoffrey perceives, the suggestion that Sir Geoffrey and other constitutional law experts are proponents of increasing the number of MPs, may prove to be a hard political sell to the general public.
The Standing Orders Committee will continue to hear from submitters, take them into consideration, and eventually compile their findings into a final report, ultimately steering the direction of the rules for the next Parliamentary term.
To listen to the audio version of this story, click the link near the top of the page.
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