Green Party submission on Standing Orders
I got too busy to do a submission to the main review of Standing Orders. But I see the Greens did one, so I’ll comment on some of their proposals:
- Reform of question time: Support having a PM’s question time and also more issue of the day debates. Also support more questions to be allocated to the Opposition
- Support having Chairs of Select Committees determined proportional to party size in the House.
- Support having a threshold for petitions to automatically require a Government response
- Do not support secret election of Speaker. Democracy must be open.
- Do not support automatic introduction of members’ bills just because they have majority support as would flood members’ days. However could support if threshold was say a 2/3 supermajority
- Do not support Parliament having to ratify treaties in advance. Is impractical and mean we would rarely negotiate a treaty
- No problems with location of MPs trusts being disclosed
- Agree being present at a Cabinet Committee should count as present in Parliament
- Totally against proposal to ban lobbyists from having parliamentary swipe cards. We should make MPs and Parliament more accessible, not less. My view is that anyone who is not a security risk and has a legitimate reason to regularly visit MPs should be able to get a swipe card.
- Quite like the suggestion to replace the bells summoning Parliament with bird calls.