Edgeler on Labour refusing to answer questions
Graeme Edgeler writes:
So, what questions have National MPs been asking? …
“8560 (2017). Hon Mark Mitchell to the Defence (Minister – Ron Mark) (16 Nov 2017): What meetings, if any, has the Minister attended between 26 October 2017 and 15 November 2017, including subject, attendees, and agenda items?”
It’s the type of thing any beat reporter probably does once a month via the OIA: ask the Minister of Health, or Education, or Defence who they have met with in the last month (or in this case, the first 3 weeks or so since being a Minister), or what reports they’ve received in the last month, and then 20 working days later once you received the reply, put in further requests about reports or meetings of particular interest. It is an entirely reasonable question for the opposition defence spokesperson to ask
So a simple request for a list of meetings and topics. But the Government refused to answer:
Hon Ron Mark (Defence (Minister – Ron Mark)) replied: I meet regularly, formally and informally, with officials and various stakeholders. A range of issues are discussed. If the Member would like to be more specific I will endeavour to answer the question.
So National then asked about a smaller time period – just four days. Got the same response. And note the Ministerial replies explicitly say to be more specific, so this is why they then asked about each individual day.
But even then, Ministers have refused to answer:
8393 (2017). Chris Bishop to the Police (Minister – Stuart Nash) (16 Nov 2017): Did the Minister have any meetings in his capacity as Minister of Police on October 27, if so, what people and organisations did he meet with on that day, where were the meetings held and what were the main items of business?
Hon Stuart Nash (Police (Minister – Stuart Nash)) replied: I meet regularly, formally and informally, with officials and various stakeholders. A range of issues are discussed. If the Member would like to be more specific I will endeavour to answer the question.
So having refused to answer about their meetings over a month, a week or even a day, now Bishop has been forced to ask about specific hours within a day.
11778 (2017). Chris Bishop to the Minister of Police (22 Nov 2017): Did the Minister have any meetings in his capacity as Minister of Police on October 27 between 8 and 9am, if so, what people and organisations did he meet with at that time; where were the meetings held and what were the main items of business?
This is what Ministers have said National should do. They refuse the more general requests and say be more specific.
So far, Bishop’s hour-by-hour requests only cover the first two days the Minister of Police was in office, although the essentially rejected day-by-day requests covered several weeks. The Minister should consider himself lucky. Far from being aghast that National MPs have asked “a whopping 6254 written questions”, I am instead surprised by their forbearance. They are being denied information they ought to have. By rights, they should have asked more.
Again rare to have such an arrogance in a Government within a month of being sworn in.
Ministers have only themselves to blame that National MPs have had to ask questions about what they’ve been doing each week, each day and each hour. It’s because they haven’t told them (and us) already.
Information about who a Minister has met, or what reports they have received are matters of public interest. While the explicit content of some meetings, or some briefings may be properly withheld, the existence of the meetings themselves will not, just like the existence of arrests and shootings in Baltimore.
Clare Curran has recently been appointed Minister for Open Government. She should take the opportunity to propose to Cabinet the automatic release of ministerial schedules.
Curran campaigned vigorously for OIA reform in opposition. She now has a chance to walk the walk rather than talk the talk.
While there is no limit on the number of written questions that the opposition can ask, the opposition should not ask 6254 written questions in a month. But the reason this is so is that they shouldn’t have to.
The asking of a large number of very specific questions is an entirely proportional response to the refusal of Ministers to seriously answer reasonable questions. Hopefully this reprisal again has its intended effect, and Ministers should realise that they were wrong to have refused to seriously answer the more general questions National MPs had asked.
You wonder if they are hiding something?