Speaker's little helpers: Parliament's other presiding officers

By Louis Collins

At its core, politics is about the exchange of ideas and arguments. At Parliament, these ideas and arguments evolve into bills, and often laws. Given the high stakes involved, it's crucial that debate is able to be robust, but also kept civil and orderly.

Enter the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who you'll know as Gerry Brownlee - or as he is now more frequently referred to, Mr Speaker.

Brownlee is the head honcho among Parliament's presiding officers. That term might stir up images of a judge, but when it comes to the Speaker, the better comparison really is more akin to a referee or umpire. More than just an adjudicator or moderator of debate though, the Speaker is essentially the closest thing to a minister of Parliament, and the leader of the legislative branch of government.

The role is constitutionally important in representing the House to the sovereign, with the Speaker sitting in third place after the governor general and the prime minister in New Zealand's order of precedence.

Largely thanks to the almost trope-like tendency of political pundits to make such comparisons, sporting analogies have actually become fairly useful in explaining the often arcane world of parliamentary procedure. To some, the legislature looks like a Machiavellian chess match, while others may draw parallels to a stand and slug boxing match.

Whichever sporting discipline one prefers, common traits are teams in the forms of parties, players in the form of MPs, a debating chamber as the playing field, and the Speaker there to blow the whistle and keep order.

Like most sports, Parliament's referee has a team of assistant referees (or touch judges) in the form of the deputy Speaker - essentially an understudy Speaker role - and assistant Speakers, who remain party MPs but have the full authority of the Speaker when in the Speaker's chair.

If you consider that a normal sitting week is 17 hours, that's a long time for one person to be in the chair, hence, the deputy Speaker, along with the assistant Speakers, play a key role in breaking up the load.

The official role of deputy Speaker has been in place since 1992, with the assistant Speaker role established four years later in 1996. Before then, the New Zealand Parliament used the Westminster model of having a chairman of committees, who presided over the frequently lengthy Committee of the Whole House stage. This is still one of the main responsibilities of Parliament's deputy and assistant Speakers.

When it comes to the chamber, the Speaker (Gerry Brownlee) is mainly seen presiding over Question Time, the general debate, and (less often) the various reading stage debates of a bill. What you will never see him presiding over, however, is the Committee of the Whole House. This is the nitty-gritty stage of the legislative process, after the second reading, where MPs really put a bill under the microscope, section by section.

In this 54th Parliament, there is a deputy Speaker (National's Barbara Kuriger) and three assistant Speakers (National's Maureen Pugh, Labour's Greg O'Connor, and the Greens' Teanau Tuiono - the first presiding officer from the Green Party). The House sat down with Kuriger, O'Connor, and Tuiono before one of their pre-sitting briefings from the clerks.

When to blow the whistle?

Assistant Speakers still have responsibilities within their own parties, so both Tuiono and O'Connor have the unique task of switching between being partisan and bipartisan.

"[Parliament is] an incredibly siloed place," O'Connor reckons.

"Everyone has a role here. Within the party you have spokesperson roles, and that's really where your expertise lies. In government you're a minister, and that's your area of expertise. Of course, as speakers or presiding officers, we are across all of those issues, so it's almost a de-siloing role, if you like. It's probably one of the very few roles in the House - particularly for elected representatives - where your job is to actually have an overview of everything."

Over the years, each Speaker has approached the role differently, with varyingly strict application of the rules for debate. The same goes for these three presiding officers. Kuriger, for example, says she can sometimes find herself being harder on her own side for the sake of not being seen as biassed.

Tuiono, like a vigilant referee, sometimes feels the need to tell the players in the debating chamber to get on with it and play the game. "It's all on TV, you know, and if we can see that they're kind of drifting off, then the nation can see them drifting off, as well. Acknowledging they're here to have their say and and the government is also here to have their say. Everyone's here to have their say, but we've got to keep things moving."

O'Connor goes back to another sporting analogy.

"Like every referee in every game - if you don't know who the referee is, and you didn't notice them at the end of it, then they've probably had a great game, and that's pretty much our goal. If you start to try and inject yourself as a speaker-you ... don't want to be the referee that is blowing the whistle every two minutes. We want free-flowing debate, as long as it's within Standing Orders. You can be too rigid around this. You have to kind of take the personalities of the House into account as well."

Making sure those personalities don't manifest as personal attacks is also something the Speaker can blow the whistle on. If things get really heated, they even have the red card-esque option of booting a member from the chamber.

'The real heroes': Parliament's Clerks

For Tuiono, being a neutral figure in the verbal melee doubles as a unique opportunity to be a spectator of debate from the parliamentary equivalent of pitchside seats.

"Sitting up on that chair, you've got that overview, you see it all. You can see the whips doing their bit, trying to organise their parties. You've got the clerks, the real heroes of the House, supporting us to do our work and to really get into some of the details. Some of these bills are big... Getting through that detail and trying to interpret the Standing Orders and Speakers' Rulings in terms of the different debates that people are having can get quite complicated."

If Kuriger, O'Connor and Tuiono are the assistant referees, think of Parliament's Clerks as perhaps the TMO or third umpires. Kuriger says they were key to getting acquainted with the nuances of the role when she began her tenure.

"When you're first asked to do the job, you think, 'oh, how do I know how to do that?' They are the people that sit beside us, and nobody hears much from them, except when they're taking a vote, but they actually make us look good."

Chairing 'the game of time'

Filibustering is a concept synonymous with American politics, but it certainly occurs here in New Zealand too - but mostly during just one of the stages of debate. The Committee of the Whole House stage is all about delving into the details, and has not set duration. This is fertile ground for cultivating prolonged debate about the most minute of minute specificities.

"The House is a game of time," Kuriger says. "The government always wants to go fast, and the opposition always wants to slow it down. I've sat on both sides, and it's always the same."

O'Connor concurs. "When we are in committee, one side wants to shut the committee down, the other side wants to keep it going. And so being the chair in the middle of that, it's very important to be fair, because if you get it right when you close a part and then put it to the vote, both sides - while they might not agree - will accept that they've had a fair go. And that's really the goal, particularly during the Committee of the Whole [House] stage."

As long as new material or ideas are being raised during the Committee of the Whole House, the debate can continue. It's the job of the presiding officer to keep track of what's already been said and ensure discourse stays relevant to the specific part of the bill being discussed.

Luckily, Tuiono says, they have materials to make this easier

"We actually have tracker sheets that we try to keep a close eye on, with what people have said, the types of arguments [made], who said it, and that kind of thing. But a really skilled debater can introduce new material, they can get very, very specific, I've found some members' contributions to be very creative."

O'Connor has a term for such members.

"That person you might call the anorak, who absolutely knows all the rules inside out. And they are the people that often know as much, if not more than, the clerks. So those people, when they speak, you know full well that they will probably know exactly what they're talking about."

Conversely, Kuriger, during her time thus far in the chair, has gained a solid understanding of what isn't effective during the Committee of the Whole House.

"The ones that get frustrated, the ones that come in and probably haven't been part of the debate - they make a wide-ranging statement on what is a very narrow debate, and wonder why that might bring about a closure of that part."

Kuriger, Tuiono, and O'Connor are all in agreement that the role had given them a better understanding of Parliament as an institution, largely due to the bipartisan nature of the job.

"You get that overview as well, and get a sense of actually what makes different Members tick, and all the different parties as well, which I don't think you would get if you just, kind of, sided within your own party. So it's good to actually hear all those different perspectives and to see where they're coming from."

RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, its legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.