ARTICLE FOR THE NATIONAL TIMES

As a former Leader of the House of Representatives, I know something about the use – and misuse – of Question Time. Of course, both governments and oppositions use the parliament to make their political points. There’s nothing wrong with that. If questions and answers weren’t focused on the key issues of the day and weren’t infused with each side’s political values MPs wouldn’t be doing their job. The public expect a contest and quite properly make judgments about their leaders and potential leaders based on what they see.

The problem at the moment is that ministers are refusing to answer the Opposition’s questions and using their own backbenchers’ questions not to tell the truth about the Government but to tell lies about the Opposition. I can’t say that the former Government was entirely blameless. Ministers have often answered specific questions about apparent maladministration in their portfolios with bluster about the real or imaginary faults of their political opponents. It’s arguably a fair response to tendentious or trivial questions. When employed repeatedly in response to serious problems with key government programmes, though, the minister under questioning is diminished, the parliament is demeaned and the quality of government is reduced.

Over the past fortnight, the Deputy Prime Minister and minister for far too much, Julia Gillard has been under sustained parliamentary pressure over the Government’s school building programme. It’s not “nit-picking” to question why $2.5 million should be spent knocking down four perfectly serviceable existing classrooms at Abbotsford school to erect four new ones. There are dozens of comparable examples of building projects that defy common sense. Whatever this programme’s ultimate merits, taxpayers should not have to put up with waste and the responsible minister should be held accountable for it.

In response, Gillard’s best option would have been to accept that some of the projects may need to be revised in the light of local concerns and to pledge to work with the relevant state authorities to deliver a more rational outcome. If she’d accepted that that all programmes of this size and complexity have some hiccups, she would have enhanced her reputation. Instead, she has claimed that the Opposition doesn’t support any school spending and, starting from yesterday, that the Opposition wants to rip-off workers. On both counts she’s dead wrong and she knows it. The former Howard Government spent about a billion dollars a year on school infrastructure but, importantly, gave it directly to the schools for what their communities wanted rather through the state government. The former Government’s workplace relations legislation is gone forever but we can’t forsake the flexibility it gave Australian businesses and the prosperity it helped to create. Plainly, the Rudd Government is raising the Work Choices bogeyman to distract attention from the problems now emerging from its re-regulation of the labour market.

The Government could perhaps be excused some of its sharper politicking if executed with a degree of wit. Yesterday, the Prime Minister began Question Time with a rambling 11 minute lecture that should have been a Ministerial Statement (only that would have allowed an Opposition response). The Gillard blunderbuss on workplace relations followed, backed up by lengthy non-answers on schools. Whatever the former Government’s faults, there were almost no ten minute diatribes and question time usually finished with 20 questions dealt with in about an hour and a quarter. My former ministerial colleagues can attest to the pressure they were under to aim at three minute answers. Yesterday, it took the Rudd Government almost two hours to answer just 16 questions.

When Gillard was the Manager of Opposition Business, she demanded a four minute limit on ministerial answers. She has totally failed to practice in government what she preached from opposition. The Opposition believes that this standard should be adhered to and will do what it can to force the Government to comply. Another issue that needs to be revisited is an independent speakership. The former Government made a mistake not to accept this, the last time it was proposed. This would be a fine way for Prime Minister Rudd to rise above the partisan ruck – if that’s what he really wants.

Source: TONY ABBOTT