On The House we often refer to a government minister titled Leader of the House. Currently that minister is Chris Bishop. In the previous administration it was Chris Hipkins and later Grant Robertson. As you can tell, it’s a role typically held by a senior minister.
Louis Donovan, House Advisor in the office of the Leader of the House Chris Bishop, helps manage the government's legislative agenda. He is pictured in his Beehive office. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
One impossible job among many
The Leader of the House is responsible for managing a government’s entire legislative agenda, including what is debated and passed by the House and when.
They coordinate with the Parliamentary Counsel Office (legislative drafters), and chair the Cabinet Legislation Committee (quality control). It’s a job that necessitates ‘managing’ ministerial colleagues, so seniority helps. This all may sound difficult, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. With politics as its oil, parliament seldom runs smoothly. Any plan will be quickly upset: by a crisis, a political consideration, a late amendment, or even a tricksy coalition partner.
Being Leader of the House is a full-time job, but no senior minister has only one portfolio. Chris Bishop is also Minister for RMA Reform, of Housing, of Infrastructure, of Sports and Recreation, and an Associate Minister of Finance.
There are entire ministries to keep on top of those other roles, but only a solitary staffer assists with the Leader of the House role – the House Advisor, Louis Donovan.
The House chatted with Louis Donovan recently. You can listen to that chat (and a little from his predesessor at the link above).
Donovan points out that it is Chris Bishop, as Leader of the House, who makes the ultimate calls; but this underplays the three-dimensional sudoku that is Donovan’s job.
It’s not a job for someone who likes certainty. Anytime you think you have all the ducks lined up, one will fly away or get shot by circumstance.
“That's one of the fun challenges of this job, I guess,” says Louis Donovan, “I've got quite a few spreadsheets that get changed every day, multiple times a day, but, yeah, it's my job.”
There are endless pitfalls.
“My plans have to be able to adapt to everything… I don't think there's been a single sitting week yet where the plan that I wrote has been the plan that has ended up happening, but that's normal, and that's to be expected.”
The Parliament’s calendar and it’s hazards
One problem is where to fit everything. It would be easy to run out of time for crucial things.
“When you look at the parliamentary sitting calendar, you quickly run out of days to schedule these bills”, says Donovan.
Let’s get down among the weeds for a moment to see what he means. Parliament has a set calendar of sitting days agreed for each year (though governments can and do add to them with urgency and extended sittings). The House sits for three days each week and 30 weeks each year (for 17 hours per week). Total that up and you get 510 hours to debate legislation (plus any extra sittings).
That may sound like a lot of time but it gets eaten up quickly. Two weeks are devoted to select committee scrutiny of the government – leaving 476 hours. An hour(ish) every day is question time – 392 hours. An hour every Wednesday is given over to general debate – 363 hours. Every other Wednesday is devoted to member’s bills – leaving around 281 hours.
A calendar eaten by obligations
But it doesn’t stop there. From that total you also have to subtract all the set-piece debates that must occur. Donovan begins ticking them off his fingers.
“The Parliament has to set aside time for the Estimates debates [totalling about 24 hours], and for the Annual Review Debates [10 hours]. At the start of each parliament there's the Address in Reply Debate [19 hours], and at the start of each [other] year there's the Debate on the Prime Minister's statement [13 hours]. All of this actually chews up time quite quickly.”
Those events take between 46 and 53 hours, which is more than another four sitting weeks.
There are also Urgent Debates, Special Debates, Ministerial Statements, Maiden Speeches and Valedictories to fit in. Some of those happen without warning.
Plus passing the taxation provisions, validating secondary legislation and various Treaty Settlement Bills.
Around all of that, a government gets to squeeze in the legislation it actually wants passed. And the Advisor (and the Leader of the House) have to make it fit – somehow.
To achieve this, Donovan works backwards.
“Particularly working back from when you want the bill to become an act – when do you want it to be law. You’ve got to work backwards from there.”
There is still guesswork – select committees and the Committee of the Whole stage can take longer than expected.
You can imagine that each week must be an adventure.
“What are the bills that we need to pass this week? What are the bills that we'd like to pass? And you've got to make sure, is the Minister going to be available – are they going to be free to show up in the House? Is the bill ready? Because you might have lots of bills on the Order Paper (we've got roughly 20 at the moment), but that doesn't mean they're necessarily all available for debate next sitting day.”
Just when you think you’ve got it all nailed down, something will happen to screw it all up and send you back to the drawing board. A media story might mean an issue needs to be dealt with sooner (or quietly put on the back-burner); a coalition partner might have second thoughts (this seemed to happen a lot during the Labour/NZ First government); a bill that is ‘ready to go’, will instead require revision, a court case will land an urgent fix in your lap… . Anything you can imagine might go wrong, probably will.
Louis Donovan professes to having lots of constantly changing spreadsheets with “plans on top of plans”. Because ‘just in case’ is a daily occurrence.
Note: Back in 2018, The House chatted with Peter Hoare when he was House Advisor to Chris Hipkins. He now advises the Labour Whips’ office and co-ordinates a fair bit with Louis Donovan who is now in the Minister’s office.
