There are various parts of Parliament that could be deemed crucial to the functioning of the place, but perhaps none quite so much as the House Office.
It’s part of the Clerk’s department and is usually a hive of activity, particularly when the House is sitting.
Pavan Sharma, the Manager of the House Office at New Zealand's Parliament. Photo: VNP / Johnny Blades
“I’d describe us as a hub of information that the House requires to do the work of Parliament,” explained Pav Sharma, the Manager of the House Office.
“So we’re a central point for the papers that ministers present to the House to inform other members, a really pivotal part of the accountability that ministers have to the House. And you also get a real sense of just the vast amount of work done by the public sector, because a lot of that information passes through the House, and enables all members to scrutinise the activities of government.”
Every sitting day the House Office processes questions, papers and reports that come in, while preparing special documents to give the presiding officers, the Speaker of Parliament, as well as the chairpersons of select committees, the information and specific words they need to conduct their business.
Drill Sheet
If it weren’t for the House Office, MPs might turn up to the chamber and be left clueless about what to do. In addition to working through the aforementioned items and papers, the Office prepares what it calls a Drill Sheet for each sitting day.
“It’s a kind of script that enables the right motions, the right questions, the right votes to be put at the right time, so that the procedures are followed properly, because we always want to ensure that when the House is debating for example legislation that it’s following the proper processes of the standing orders, so that there can never be any doubt that a bill is properly considered by the House, that it’s been read a first time or a second time or a third time, and that it has been appropriately passed by the House,” Sharma said.
When the House is to sit, various key documents are required by the Speaker and presiding officers in order to conduct the business of Parliament.
“I guess the most important one is probably the Order Paper which is effectively the agenda for the House. What that does is actually set out the first six, seven or eight items of business that the government, on a Government Day, or if it’s Member’s Day, the Members Bills or Private and Local bills that are going be considered by the House on any particular day,” Sharma said.
“One of the great things about working in the House Office is you’re never quite sure what’s going to be coming through. On any given day, we’re going to be getting requests from members to have amendments to bills drafted. We’ll have a large volume of correspondence relating to written questions, to other items of business that the house is considering, papers for presentation, general queries from the public, officials, from members of staff. We’re working through all of those.”
Questions
The poor souls in the House Office are tasked with vetting the endless questions put by MPs to Ministers. All questions - both oral and written - must be checked to ensure they meet very prescribed rules.
“In the last three months or so we have vetted approximately 12,000 questions,” Sharma explained.
“Those questions have to conform to the rules within the standing orders in terms of the content. For example, there has to be some sort of ministerial responsibility in those questions, and they have to be appropriate in terms of parliamentary language. They can’t contain irony, they can't be political attacks. So vetting those questions is a core part of what we do every day. We never know when we get in in the morning how many are going to be waiting for us.”
Matthew Louwrens, a House Officer at New Zealand's Parliament. Photo: VNP / Johnny Blades
Questions have become an important tool in parliamentary democracy. Matthew Louwrens, a House Officer in the House Office, said questions need to meet a very prescribed set of rules.
“We need to check to whether they meet with the rules. So if a question asserts some kind of fact, we need to make sure that that fact is accurate. They need to provide us with the information so we can go and see ‘that’s truthful’. So those are the kinds of things you have to think about.”
During vetting, it often requires “quite subtle, nuanced thinking”, Louwrens said, to figure out that the particular wording of a question doesn’t work, and to suggest something else.
“If it’s a real obvious tweak, we’ll say ‘don’t do this, but this wording would work’. We’re not there to get in the way. We’re there to facilitate it.”
Chamber button
The dynamic nature of the work this team comes into play especially around those times when the House is sitting. Sharma is often in the thick of the action in the chamber in his role as a Clerk at the Table.
“So I provide, along with the team of Clerks at the Table, we provide procedural advice to the presiding officers, and we note what’s going on in the House. These form the Clerks’ Notes which form the basis for the journals… effectively the written record of the House’s decisions. So they’re like a companion piece to the Hansard for example. So Hansard records everything that members and presiding officers say in the house - and the journals are effectively the minutes, they record those decisions that house has taken,” Sharma said.
Meanwhile, House Officers such as Louwrens move in and out of the chamber according to the rhythms of parliament business.
“A big part of [what we do] is we are the people at hand, so if the Clerk at the Table needs us to get something, or if they’ve got something that needs to come out, they’ll call us. There’s actually a button they can push, and it buzzes in our room, and we go ‘oh that’s the chamber!’, we’ve got to go running in,” Louwrens said.
“So if it’s a day when they’re in committee, …member’s might be lodging lots of amendments and we’ll be running in and out of the chamber, because as new amendments come in we need to make sure that those amendments are in the chamber on the table so that members know that they are available and they can debate them, and also making sure that the lists of all amendments that the presiding officers have is up to date. We’re constantly needing to make sure that’s up to date.”
Deploying into the chamber can be exciting, Louwrens admitted.
“The first time I had to go in while it was Question Time there was a real energy in there. When you walk in there and all all members are in there, it’s very different and feels alive. Typically, you’re going in and out. You’re not spending much time in there. But in those sorts of situations, you can just feel, ‘okay, this place feels very different’ in those times.”
Volume and variety
The House Office facilitates the Ballot for Member’s Bills, and is responsible for assisting members with drafting proposed amendments to a bill. As well as helping with the front end of legislation, the House Office is the vital conduit at the back end.
“We usually work towards turning a Bill around with seven days from the time it has had a third reading to when it has the royal assent of the Governor General. But with a really huge bill, a bill which has got multiple parts and hundreds of provisions, that can take longer, or it may involve multiple people working on the bill for quite a concentrated period of time,” Sharma said.
Before the new law is signed off, the House Office goes carefully through the legislation as it is written out, organising in pairs to read it aloud to each other, checking thoroughly in order to make sure it is entirely reflective of the legislative process.
“But we also have a limited discretion about what we can agree to change," Sharma noted.
"So we work with the Parliamentary Counsel office about ensuring that only what the house has agreed to is reflected in the final version of the act that comes out of the legislative process."
“It’s very satisfying when you go through something and you find, say, a mistake in the legislation. You’re like, ok, that’s great, you feel like you've made a contribution,” Louwrens said.
“And often it’s just kind of fun. You might have a few hundred written questions that come in over a day, and you have a lot to go through. But it’s really fascinating, because it means you’re constantly aware of what’s going on, very much aware of everything that’s going on in the country at once, and that’s really fun.”
Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Due to the pandemic, the last two and a half years have seen unusual sittings of the House, working in bubbles, and various new processes introduced. The House Office has taken it in its stride, a team who appear to relish the sheer volume and variety of work that comes across their desk.
“You’re always conscious that the work that you’re doing is supporting the work of the House, and so much important work goes on in the House that that’s really galvanising,” Pav Sharma said.
“It provides a lovely, immediate focus for the work that you're doing, and clear sense of that value, really.”
