The Clerk of New Zealand’s House of Representatives is a man named David Wilson. You are likely to have noticed him sitting at 'The Table' in front of the Speaker if you watch Question Time in Parliament. You may wonder just what his role is.
This week the Governor General, Dame Cindy Kiro, renewed his warrant for a further seven years. The beginning of another ‘stretch in the big house’ seemed a decent excuse to have a chat about just what his job is.
The Clerk of New Zealand's House of Representatives, David Wilson. Photo: RNZ / Jamie Tahana
“It's a really interesting job with two main parts,” David Wilson says. “One is you're the Parliament's main adviser on parliamentary law and procedure.
“So, advise all MPs from all parties and support them in achieving their aims in Parliament, whether that's advancing legislation, starting an inquiry, getting a petition considered by a committee; anything to help MPs carry out their constitutional functions.
“Then the other part is the chief executive of an office of about 120 people who support select committees, keep records of the House, transcribe everything MPs say, make sure it's broadcast on TV and radio and webcast, engage with other Parliaments overseas and of course, communicate Parliament and engage people with it here in New Zealand as well.”
A fairly all-encompassing role then, which I would boil down to ‘running the team that runs Parliament’s House and Committees’.
Parliament is actually an incredibly complicated beast, and while the MPs are happy to turn up and debate, someone has to make it all run smoothly, so that it actually achieves something.
David Wilson says his team “create the conditions and support MPs… then leave it to the MPs to advocate their positions and argue their cases”.
Keeper of the rules
His team are also the people who have their heads around Parliament’s many rules. A few of the MPs do too, but other MPs regularly illustrate a need for experts.
“Well, there are a lot of rules so it's not surprising,” says Wilson “There's more than 400 Standing Orders (which are Parliament's rules). There's many, many years of precedents kept in the Speakers’ Rulings, which we put together.
“We advise MPs on developing new rules, we also write them and remember what they are. So we can tell MPs and help them understand what the rules are so that they can think about ways to achieve what they want to achieve.”
at the table Photo: © VNP / Phil Smith
A long stretch or a life sentence
David Wilson says that when his first seven-year-term was announced an MP commented in the House that it sounded like a prison sentence. His second stretch commences this July.
“It's an unusually long term. It did used to be a job for life prior to legislation in 1988.”
Apparently 'for life' meant until a clerk retired. David Wilson isn’t aware of any who literally dropped dead at Parliament’s Table.
“Though the hours were very long. They frequently sat into the early hours of the morning. So it would be possible. Now, like most chief executives in the state sector there is a limit, but it's longer than those, and I think the idea is that we'll span several parliaments, just to help with the independence of the role. So perhaps if you've got offside with the government of the day, you'd have a bit of time before anyone could turf you out because they didn't like you.”
The Clerk says that the way clerks are appointed helps them be seen as independent. The Speaker makes a recommendation to the Governor General, but only after consulting with all the party leaders.
“So when you start the job or if you're reappointed you can be confident that (certainly at that point in time), you've got the confidence of members in the House.”
Coaching opponents
That confidence is necessary because otherwise no-one would trust the Clerk’s advice.
“Because the role is an advisory one, …most of the time you're giving advice. And in order to persuade people to accept that advice, you've got to be credible. And you'd only be credible if you know what you're talking about, if people see you as fair, and also they can trust you.”
It helps that clerks don’t report to any Minister of the Government, so everyone can be confident that their confidential advice stays confidential.
The Clerk notes that sometimes MPs from opposing parties might ask for advice about achieving contrary things in the same situation. And like a lawyer serving both sides of the court the Clerk’s office duly tells everyone what the rules allow.
“We may be telling different sides of the house, how to both achieve their ends at the same time, even when those ends are in conflict.
“We frequently will give people tips or tricks about how to achieve what they want. And if they can't achieve what they want the way they want, we'll try and find them another way. We're not in the business of saying ‘no’.”
Speaker Trevor Mallard and Clerk David Wilson listening carefully in the chamber. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Guarding the ballots
The job isn’t all advice though. The Clerk also has some other odd constitutional roles.
“We do, for six months after the election, collect all of the ballot papers from the country. …If there have been referendums there might be many millions of sheets of paper. We store them all in a warehouse. And they have to be available to be checked in case there's any dispute over the election result. Once that period is over, we then have to supervise the destruction of them all.”
As much as I like to imagine begowned clerks dancing around a pyre of burning ballots, the real world is more mundane.
“Staff go out with a delegation from me, and they sit and watch all the papers being shredded. They can't do anything else, because they've actually got to witness them being shredded. So they can't read a book, they might listen to a podcast. …The idea of an enduring secret ballot is that once they are no longer needed for any of those challenge purposes, they should no longer exist.”
Legislative caretaker
It is clerks who midwife bills through Parliament, managing the many submissions offered and amendments made. When a bill gets passed by the House they are responsible for turning it into law.
“We prepare all the legislation for royal assent. So when it's passed by the House, staff from my office read through it word-for-word to make sure every bill passed by the House that the Governor General is going to sign is exactly what Parliament passed and nothing else. So that's quite a laborious process.”
Keep in mind that some legislation is very long and almost lethally soporific. The word-by-word check is to make sure neither mistake nor malice have altered the bill.
“No one does try and sneak words in but it’s an assurance that hasn't happened; and then checking for mistakes, which are rare but they do occasionally come up and we've got some discretion to fix those.
“Sometimes [bills] get passed very quickly, and that's a particularly dangerous time. And that's the bit we won't rush no matter how much of a hurry anybody is in.”
Before a bill gets to the Governor General though, the Clerk’s signature is joined by those of the Attorney General and the Prime Minister.
“The Attorney General is basically giving the Governor General assurance there's no legal reason the bill shouldn't be passed. And the Prime Minister is formally giving the advice to the Governor General, because the Governor General acts on the advice of the government of the day. So the Prime Minister signs that off essentially saying to the Governor General, ‘you should give assent to this bill’. And if [the Prime Minster] can't, then another minister does it on her behalf.”
The Clerk of the House of Representatives, David Wilson, masked for Covid-19. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
The Parliament of change
New Zealand’s Parliament is a bit unusual in being prepared to regularly tinker and experiment with its rules to find the best way of doing its job. Having had a lot of practice at change put it in a great position to manage Covid-19.
Parliament’s clerks had already moved select committees online (on the scent of an oily rag) and the rules (and mind-set), around voting and attendance in the chamber had changed drastically since MMP, making remote attendance an easier transition than for some parliaments.
But even with that experience the speed with which the Office of the Clerk was able to put the Epidemic Response Committee online and on TV was remarkable.
“It was all stuff that my staff did within a few days; they came up with the ideas, they drafted the rules, then set up the technical process to broadcast it. And it was a really successful way both of scrutinising the Government (which is really important when it exercises emergency powers), but also that people could see that and it was watched by huge numbers of people.
“Admittedly,” David Wilson adds with a laugh, “they were locked up at home. So they might not have had a lot of other viewing options. But that was popular television, it was really good to be able to do that so quickly.”
The same applies to setting up hybrid settings of the House more recently. The House has always met in person and all the rules presume the physical presence of MPs.
“MPs, including the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, have appeared virtually and participated. And that's proved itself to be really useful.”
New rules were needed so hybrid sittings were still legitimate, or any laws they passed might be moot.
Parliament usually updates its rules every three years (to come into effect after each election). Recently those changes have been significant. David Wilson notes that a number of Parliament's proceedings "which were pretty formal before have become more conversational.”
That has made them more publicly palatable and also more useful to MPs.
A call for more change
Despite a lot of recent modernisation, the Clerk still has ideas for further change.
“There's always more to do there. They're never perfect. There is a lot to do around improving scrutiny of the Government …the way that government spending and performance are scrutinised.
“I think the model we've got hasn't been that good at focusing on major ongoing issues that might last more than the three-year electoral cycle; things that need to be addressed by a whole lot of government sectors rather than just one department. And we're not always that good at knowing whether the things that Parliament approves the spending of money on are actually delivered. And I think there's some structural change that needs to be made.”
As it happens, Parliament has just called for ideas for rule changes from the public. The call for submissions is earlier than usual so the public can get first crack before the political parties offer ideas in response.
The closing date for submissions is not until mid-September, so there is plenty of time for a strong cuppa and a good think.
