Chris Bishop: On keeping a tidy parliament

Hutt South MP Chris Bishop is now the National Party’s third ranking minister and Leader of the House. Before becoming an MP he was a humble political advisor in the ministerial office of Gerry Brownlee.

At that time, among other roles, Brownlee was Leader of the House. Bishop’s job was to help manage that. What ‘that’ is we’ll get to in a moment. 

It’s “a nice bit of symmetry”, Bishop says. He’s not alone in that symmetry.

“Interestingly, Chris Hipkins used to do the same job for Michael Cullen, I believe; and then he became Leader of the House under the last Labour Government." 

Now, of course, Bishop in turn has a smart young staffer who helps him carry out the role. “I've got great staff in my office. So, very lucky.”

Before we get further into this article it might help to provide some context on that Leader of the House role. 

New Zealand’s cascade of power

Who really runs New Zealand can be confusing, so here’s a quick run down through the big-wigs. (Feel free to rewrite the below to be sung to “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly”.)

• The person who holds the ultimate power in New Zealand is the King, 
• His stand-in on the ground is the Governor General.
• The group that wields that power (on behalf of the King), is the House of Representatives. (We’ll call it parliament for ease, but strictly speaking Parliament includes the King.) 
• Parliament’s ‘boss’ is the Speaker (who actually outranks the Prime Minister).
• The leader of the group that holds sway in Parliament is the Prime Minister. 
• The smaller gang who, with the Prime Minister, decide how to exercise their group’s dominance in Parliament, is the Cabinet. 
• And, finally, the person in charge of turning those decisions and that dominance into law is the Leader of the House.  

My apologies to any exacting constitutionalists. 

A terrible name, a potent job

As a ministerial title, Leader of the House is a terrible, confusing name. The 'House' part of the title is the House of Representatives (Parliament’s House, i.e. the legislature), but the Leader of the House does not lead the House. 

A more accurate but tedious title might be Legislative Oversight and Liaison. Or, from Parliament’s point of view, ‘the annoying person who keeps bringing us extra work’.

The easiest explanation is that the Leader of the House is the government minister who shepherds the government’s legislative agenda, both in its development and in the House. 

Leader of the House is a pretty senior job. To give an idea, the recent holders are Grant Robertson, Chris Bishop, Simon Bridges, Gerry Brownlee and Michael Cullen. So who gets chosen? 

Bishop says “it suits people who enjoy Parliament.” He describes Chris Hipkins and Grant Robertson as “real parliamentarians”. Bishop includes himself in this group too. Parliamentarians, he says “think the institution's very important, accountability is very important. I'm a great lover of Parliament. I think it suits people who like the kind of intricacies, shall we say, of how Parliament works, which has its own arcane and sometimes weird rules, but I quite enjoy that.”

It does, he does.

Experience counts as well.  Bishop points out that Robertson, and for nine years Michael Cullen, both did the job concurrently with being Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. “I don't know how he fit it all in around all that stuff.” 

A double-ended job description

“The fundamental job is they're in charge of what government business gets debated, and when – that's the most important thing.” 

For more on this part of the job see this interview with Peter Hoare, who assisted both Hipkins and Robertson in the role.  

Basically, every government has a lot of legislation it wants passed, probably more than time allows. So what goes first? It’s a legislative puzzle with many moving pieces. Some bills have legal deadlines. Bills might suddenly become politically crucial, or politically problematic. Bills come and go from committees, but not always by the time you need them. And getting any of it wrong would be very public and very embarrassing.

It’s like a political Busby Berkely dance routine.

That’s organising legislation in the House. But there’s also getting it to the House.  

“But to get to that point, there's a massive amount of work from [government] departments, from public, from consultation, from officials giving advice, from ministers making decisions. There's a huge amount of work. And so I've got to kind of oversee that, from a process point of view,” Bishop explains.

That work also includes overseeing whether a bill does what Cabinet decided it should do, and does it well enough.

“I'm the chair of the Legislation Committee. So there's a whole bunch of cabinet committees, which are essentially subcommittees of the full Cabinet. I chair the legislation committee in my role as Leader of the House.”

Getting legislation to the House isn’t that easy.

“There's basically a two-stage process. [First] Ministers will make decisions on policy, and Cabinet will decide what policy they want to implement and how to do it. And [secondly], then if that requires legislation (sometimes it doesn't require legislation, but often it does); then drafting instructions are issued to the people who do actually do the writing of the bills that what's called the Parliamentary Council Office (or PCO as they're known around the traps). Once the policy becomes a draft piece of legislation, it comes to the Legislation Committee, and then into the full cabinet. Everything that goes into Parliament is signed off by Cabinet, [but] the sort of heavy lifting, the detailed analysis is done in [the cabinet] committees. …a bit like the way Parliament works, where the detailed scrutiny of legislation is done in the select committees.”

Connecting branches and parties 

“So my role is to be the fusion point or the nexus between the Executive (Cabinet/Government), and the Parliament; which are separate institutions with their own rules and their own accountabilities. That's my job – to be the liaison point,” Bishop says.

I make the crack that he is stuck in the middle. He laughs and adds a political twist. “I'm not usually one for being in the middle. But I am in this.”

The Leader of the House, their opposition shadow, and the various party whips are also the MPs stuck between the parties. Negotiating agreements and deals over what will and won't happen in the House. A lot of this happens in the weekly Business Committee, but even more occurs outside that meeting, including live on the floor of the House.

“Fundamentally, it's a competitive institution. It's a contest of ideas and a contest of policies – and that's super important. And it's really important that we preserve that. But also, there's a lot of things that happen on a quite bipartisan basis, where it just requires negotiation. And so the Business Committee is the biggest forum for that, but there’s also a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes. …and I've got a bit of a role in that.”

At this point in our chat, Chris Bishop says something that fills me with vicarious dread. Parliament is huge, complex, labyrinthine and convoluted with much more happening than anyone could reasonably be expected to be cognisant of.   

“Anything that happens in Parliament or in a committee, I generally know about, or should know about, or my staff do. And so just keeping a watching brief on all of that is really important. Governments like to …have the House be tidy. To use a favourite expression of the current speaker, Gerry Brownlee, ‘you want to make sure things are tidy’. And when Parliament, you know, gets unruly and falls apart, it does tend to reflect on the Government as well. So governments like to keep to keep a tidy Parliament.”

Managing legislation in a new parliament

Discussing the large raft of legislation passing under the Government’s 100-day plan, Chris Bishop notes that it included a lot of repeal bills.

“There's been a bit of criticism for saying, ‘Oh, well, the government doesn't stand for anything positive or constructive’. But I would say actually, getting rid of things that are bad law or things that you don't think will make a difference, that by definition, if you flip it around the other way, that's a positive thing to do. So repealing things is not necessarily a bad thing.”

I point out a more practical reason for beginning with repeal bills – they are usually easier to write. He agrees.

“Yeah, can take a very long time to draft legislation. Depends on the complexity, the subject matter. Repeal bills generally are pretty simple.”

He points out a particularly easy repeal bill to write (tax principles reporting), and a somewhat more complex repeal bill (RMA). 

And, while these repeals were being passed in the House, the drafters were probably working long days and weeks trying to complete more proactive legislation.

 “Of course, the practical reality, as you rightly say, is that you have an election, you form a government (that takes a couple of weeks). You can't actually start to make decisions about what you do legislation-wise, and start drafting bills until the government's formed, and you've been sworn in, and all of that, and that takes time. But then Parliament starts sitting immediately.” 

Which, paraphrasing, means that every new government begins well behind the race and then pedals furiously trying to catch up.

“And so one of the things we've been doing in the first 100 days is really driving the system really hard to get bills through. And we've accomplished quite a lot. I would argue, once we've got through that 100 days, Parliament will, you know, sort of go back to some form of normality, shall we say, where it's just a slightly more regular sitting schedule, non controversial bills (and controversial bills). Likewise, Members' Days as well, in which the Opposition gets a chance to put forward bills as well.”

Note:

This interview was recorded on 21 February, while the government was still knee-deep in passing huge amounts through the House, more often than not via urgency.

That arbitrary century of days has just finished and during the final week of it the first decent tranche of bills (though, by no means all of the bills debated), began heading to select committees for public consideration. 

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