New New Zealand House of Reps standing o

[Tom Round]

Steve wrote:

>    Congratulations re: your forthcoming marriage.

Thanks, Steve!

Now back to business ...

Steve's suggested some thorough reforms to the traditional operating
procedures for legislative bodies. (As far as I can tell, the formal rules
tend to be the same in all the English-speaking polities - USA, UK, Canada,
Australia, NZ, etc - although Colonel Robert's and Erskine May's
prescriptions of course operate quite differently in a largely two-party UK
House of Commons than in a "435-party" US House of Representatives.)

This issue seems quite germane to the discussion of voting methods and
electoral reform, first because a chamber elected under a reformed system
will probably need reformed standing orders [see NZ example below], and
second because no chamber, however elected, should continue using methods
that are obviously defective.

                           * * * * *

On this topic, I recently saw the following item in the latest edition of
"Round Table", the Spring 1996 edition of the Constitutional Centenary
Foundation's newsletter. [Note to those who came in late: the CCF is a non-
partisan, non-government body which examines proposals for reform to the
Australian Constitution, usually without making recommendations either
way.]

     New Standing Orders, written in plain English, came into force
     in the New Zealand Parliament on 20 February. The new Orders
     are designed to operate in a multi-party House of around 120
     Members elected under the MMP electoral system. They recognise
     political parties in the allocation of speaking time; end the
     "pairs" arrangement for absent Members; permit Members to be
     referred to by name rather than by constituency; and require no
     quorum other than the presence of a Government Minister.

As soon as these Orders come onto the NZ Government's home page, I'll
examine them in closer detail. For now, a couple of comments:

1.   "... recognise political parties in the allocation of speaking time 
.."

Might this be a pyrrhic victory for the smaller parties? Assume that the
Government party or (more likely) coalition has 66 out of 120 seats, so the
Opposition party or parties and any Independents have the other 54. On the
traditional "two-sided" Westminster practice, on my understanding, the
Government and Opposition get equal speaking time. Whereas on these
numbers, a proportional allocation would give the Government 55% of the
speaking time, not just 50%. Of course, with a two-sided House the
Government's numbers give it other advantages that greatly outweigh those
of a few extra minutes of speaking time per bill.

Why recognise parties at all, unless absolutely necessary? Why not simply
allocate each Member who wishes to speak an equal (small) parcel of time,
but allow a Member to yield or delegate his/her parcel to another Member?
This would produce proportionality in the overall allocation without any
need to grant more official privileges to political parties.

                           * * * * *

2.   ".... end the "pairs" arrangement for absent Members ..."

Explanation for readers outside the organisation formerly known as the
British Empire: a "pairs" arrangement is where the Government and
Opposition Whips agree that, if Member X has to be absent from a sitting on
reasonable grounds (eg, death in the family, travel, etc), the Member Y
from the opposing side will deliberately abstain so that the party balance
is not upset. [To use that term just one last time to annoy Steve - the
Government's "margin" is unchanged, although the Opposition's "pairloss" is
reduced (-:.]

Obviously proxy voting is much better suited to a multi-party House. When
parties may end up on different sides to the erstwhile allies on different
issues, it would be very hard to work out which is the "opposing side" for
the absent member! However, one advantage of the pairs system was that it
did discourage the Government from riding too roughshod-ly over the
Opposition. If the Opposition felt too badly done by, it always had the
option of refusing pairs. Since the Opposition was already in the minority,
it had nothing to lose if the Government refused to grant it pairs (at
worst, it would still be defeated, though [say] 51-48 rather than 51-49),
whereas the Government had everything to lose if the Opposition refused it
a pair, if the numbers were close and some of its backbenchers were sick,
absent, etc.

Proxy voting has long been used in many Continental European legislatures,
especially France (and many of its former colonies, eg in Africa). The
Fifth French Republic's constitution imposes a maximum of one proxy per
Deputy. This was to outlaw the method formerly practised by Communist Party
deputies, who would demonstrate their loyalty to the party by giving all
their proxies to the party leader to cast on their behalf!

                           * * * * *

3.   "... require no quorum other than the presence of a Government
     Minister."

Have I understood this correctly? Can 2 MPs out of 120 outvote 1 opponent
to carry a bill into law, as long as at least one Minister is present?
Contrarily, if the Opposition has put together the numbers to oust the
Government by passing a no-confidence vote by absolute majority, can
Ministers escape (or at least delay) removal by refusing to attend the
House and thus denying it a quorum?

That seems quite outrageous, if that's what it means. I would (in my
simple-minded populist/ neo-Chartist way) prefer to entrench in my ideal
Constitution a rule that each legislative chamber has power to convene
itself. The Head of State (or that chamber's own Speaker or President) must
convene the chamber to meet if petitioned by more than half of its members
 - and this quorum would drop to, say, one-third or one-quarter if it was
more than 12 months since the previous session.

A rule like this would give some enforceable teeth to otherwise-hortatory
rules, like that in the Australian Constitution's Section 6, which requires
that "There shall be a session of the Parliament once at least in every
year, so that twelve months shall not intervene between the last sitting of
the Parliament in one session and its first sitting in the next session."
(Otherwise, my guess is that the High Court would refuse to intervene to
grant, say, a writ of mandamus to compel the Governor-General to summon
Parliament, perhaps by denying that the plaintiff has standing or by
relying on tradition that prerogative writs like mandamus can't issue
against the Crown or its representatives.)

Tom Round (tomr at orgo.cad.gu.edu.au)

-------------------
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