The standard theory of government is that we have three branches, executive, judiciary, and legislature, which are independent. In Aotearoa, we have a Westminster system, which means the executive is chosen from the legislature, and automatically dominates it (at least on confidence and supply) - but its worse than that. Because the part of our legislature which is meant to be independent - select committees - is in fact utterly dependent on the executive, relying on government agencies for basic tasks like analysing and summarising submissions. The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties' submission on the review of Standing Orders raised this as an issue, and highlighted the inherent conflict of interest:
Public servants, who are subject to ministerial direction, who owe their primary duty to their Ministers, who are paid by the Executive, and whose managers’ performance assessments depend on getting the legislation through Parliament, cannot provide independent advice to Parliament...That's bad enough. But in its report on the Sustainable Biofuel Obligation Bill, released today, the Environment Committee highlighted another problem. The government decided last month to throw the biofuels obligation on the policy bonfire, fucking our long-term carbon budget in the process. And when they did that, they withdrew all support to the select committee, with the result that it just couldn't do its job anymore:...In doing the work needed to get a bill introduced, officials will have developed a belief in the correctness of their analysis of the problems and their proposals, so on a very human level they are disincentivised from agreeing to changes to something they have already worked long and hard on.
We had hoped that advisers would be able to provide a written analysis of submissions to summarise the feedback received for this bill. Some of us were disappointed that we did not receive support from officials after the Government’s announcement that it intended to withdraw the bill. Given that we had conducted a full submissions process before the announcement, we would have liked to be able to report back to the House with a summary of the written and oral submissions we received.Effectively, if you were (like me) one of the 72 people and organisations who submitted on this bill, your submission didn't even get read. The government threw it in the rubbish bin. Oh, its on the Parliament website, but the executive deprived the committee of its standard analytical tools, and as a result it was unable to salvage anything useful from this debacle.
Which rather underlines the NZCCL's point. While the Environment Committee, like Parliament, has a Labour absolute majority, what if it didn't? Under MMP, our normal government is a coalition, and Parliament is more independent. While the government could withdraw a bill, under MMP its also conceivable (if unlikely) that a committee could recommend it proceed despite that decision. And it seems really inappropriate for the government to pre-empt that by simply disabling the committee by withdrawing administrative support.
The upshot of all this: it is crystal clear that Parliament's select committees need their own independent advisers on bills - people who work for them, rather than the Minister. Its part and parcel of being an independent legislature. And its something we should all support.
(Meanwhile, as someone who submitted on the bill, I feel that once again my hard work and good faith has been abused by the government. Which is a great way to burn people off participating, and give them the impression that their submissions are only invited to provide a veneer of legitimacy...)
