Remember the budget. From way back in May. Old news eh? Not so much.
The budget announced in May isn’t actually agreed to yet. That’s not unusual. But it really needs to get finished before Parliament ends next week.
Budgets take months to get final approval because, like any other bill, they have to go through the usual Parliamentary process. Though the Budget does it all a bit differently and flashier.
Megan Woods answers MPs Estimates questions from the Table while ministry officials line up (top right) available to provide further information Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
This week the House has been focused on the Estimates Debate part of the budget process. For any other Bill this penultimate stage would be called the committee stage and be the last chance for MPs to edit a bill before final approved at the third reading.
The budget isn’t open for editing so instead 11 hours are set aside for MPs to publicly question ministers about the details of their spending plans.
Committee stages usually involve questions of the minister in charge of a bill but that’s not usually the whole point.
Every thematic section of the Government’s spending (called votes) has been looked at this week and most cabinet ministers have taken a turn at The Table being grilled on details. (The budget is split into topics: health, justice, education etc; each is a ‘vote’).
All of those ‘votes’ are voted on during the Estimates Debate. Each is a take-it-or-leave-it decision as to whether a ‘vote’ should be retained inside the budget bill. In parliamentary language the vote is that “the part stand part”.
That’s all normal. But this year the Estimates Debate has been a bit different because the rules for committee stages are being experimented with.
New rules for how Parliament does committee stages have been under trial since the lockdown. MPs now have no limit on the number of times they can stand and speak, so there is no longer an incentive to use the whole five minutes available every time they stand up.
This means an MP who is an expert on a topic can ask dozens of questions rather than just the old maximum four. So sometimes the speeches have been pretty short. Like 20 seconds short. Basically a question.
Jacqui Dean asks a question on the Estimates (budget) Photo: ©VNP / Phil Smith
“Why did the Government give away the target in September last year against the target they set for this term of Government?” - Jacqui Dean
Not always though. Most are longer. Some are very long. Some MPs take a while to catch on.
As a result of the change this year’s Estimates Debate has been less a debate and more a very, very long Question Time. Eleven hours long. Except the questions have often been asked by more junior members of the opposition than usually get a chance during Oral Questions.
It’s also less boring. It is still pretty dry, because the details are often really quite detailed. But I suspect it’s been much more useful all round. Certainly Ministers were less likely to fall asleep while waiting for a question to pop up at the end of a lengthy philippic.
And with so much opportunity to grill the ministers the opposition have a good opportunity to look for weaknesses or show up anyone less well informed.
The Estimates Debate gets polished off on Thursday (July 30) and the budget will be set down for final approval next week.
Which is just as well because next week is the last one for the current Parliament.
Also next week, Parliament will vote on whether to agree to a new set of rules (Standing Orders) for the next parliament. It’s probably a safe bet that this new way of how committee stages work will become permanent.
