More question abuse

I blogged yesterday about how Chris Hipkins forgot to mention that he and his colleagues had submitted almost as many written PQs to John Key as Minister of Ministerial Services in December 2009, as Helen Clark had over three entire years. Clark as MS Minister averaged 1 question a week and they bombarded Key with 128 in two weeks.

But it gets worse than that. A search of the PQ database finds that Labour submitted 4,000 questions across all portfolios on the 16th of December.

Even worse Trevor Mallard whined that the online system “doesn’t appear to have the capacity to deal with a number of people who like me work to deadlines. System alternates between dead slow and dropping out.”

Of course the system doesn’t cope with 4,000 in one day. Hell it normally takes three months to have that many questions asked, and Labour filed them all in one day – and in the week before Xmas.

Now again it is important that the Opposition can gain information from the Government through PQs. But that doesn’t mean you have to be inconsiderate jerks about it, and file 4,000 questions in one day, which is almost done as a spiteful act to force people to work massive amounts of overtime just before Xmas. So much for the worker’s party! There is no reason at all their questions couldn’t have been submitted over a number of weeks. It is either incompetence or spite to file 4,000 in one day.

The right to ask written questions is an important one, and I would not support any limit on how many questions can be asked by an MP or Party, But there does need to be some incentive for MPs to not file 4,000 questions in a day, and to consider the cost of collating all this information.

The costs are quite considerable. Many Depts have entire teams of staffers who do nothing but answer these questions, so the more there are, the more staff you need. And as each answer is in the name of the Minister, it has to be checked for accuracy. Generally each answer will be compiled by a Departmental staffer, checked by their manager (at least), also checked by a staffer in the Ministers office, and finally seen and approved by the Minister.

I suggest Ministers do what Max Bradford used to do. He worked out the costs of staff time (say $70 an hour) in responding to questions and as part fo every answer, would include the estimated cost of answering the question.

This would allow the media, and others, to then add up over say a year the cost of all the questions from a particular MP or party. This doesn’t mean the MP will necessarily ask fewer questions, but it means they will have an incentive to consider how reasonable their questions are.  And the public can consider whether the cost of all the questions for an MP, was good value in their opinion.