September 19, 2006 3:04pm by David Farrar

MPs written questions

The new parliamentary website makes it very easy to do stuff like find out how many written questions MPs have asked in this term of Parliament.

I am quite a fan of written questions. MPs can and do use them to find out info on their portfolios and also to dig up information for use in speeches, media releases and policy papers. They have to be answered in five days and hence are a lot quicker than the OIA.

As it has been a year since the election I have gone through and collated the number of questions asked by each MP (excluding the Chief Whip, Deputy Speaker and the LOTO) not in Government. That is 65 MPs.

Now I hasten to add that this is just one measure of an MPs activity. Some are superb debaters in the House. Others do more OIAs, others do lots of press releases, give lots of speeches etc. The point is not to judge an MPs total performance off this one indicator.

The key stats for all 65 MPs are:

Mean: 239 questions
25th percentile: 75 questions
Median: 131 questions
75th percentile: 352 questions
Minimum: 0 questions (Harawira)
Maximum: 1,536 questions (Power)

Now the mean per MP for each party is:

ACT 331
National 289
United Future 275
Green 103
NZ First 71
Maori 44

The full list in order from most to least is over the break:

Power 1536
Ryall 1168
Blumsky 877
Rich 735
Heatley 671
Peachey 657
Collins 552
English 470
Brownlee 465
Tolley 446
Foss 440
Goudie 437
McCully 432
Roy H 424
Wilkinson 399
Hutchison 383
Turner 342
Coleman 320
Wong 287
Carter D 280
Hide 237
Tremain 230
Copeland 207
Kedgley 188
Carter J 182
Smith L 180
Dean 179
Stewart 174
Fitzsimons 170
Blue 146
Borrows 133
Locke 132
Guy 131
Ardern 131
Wagner 129
King C 122
Bennett D 112
Goodhew 112
Mark 104
Finlayson 101
Smith N 101
Brown 99
Roy E 97
Key 96
Flavell 87
Clarkson 85
Bennett P 83
Worth 81
Mapp 80
Turei 77
Williamson 68
Henare 60
Turia 56
te Heuheu 32
Sharples 31
Auchinvole 31
Tanczos 30
Bradford 22
Groser 22
Woolerton 19
Paraone 19
Connell 16
Hayes 16
Donnelly 9
Harawira 0