David Farrar: A too complicated solution

Paul Goldsmith announced:

The Government has agreed to introduce legislation that will enable a four-year term of Parliament subject to a referendum, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says.

“As stipulated in the National-Act coalition agreement, the Bill is modelled on the ACT Party’s draft Constitution (Enabling a 4-Year Term) Amendment Bill.

“This means a standard term of Parliament will remain at three years, but with the ability to extend the maximum term of Parliament to four years.

“The main condition is that membership of certain select committees is calculated in a way that is proportionate to the non-Executive parliamentary party membership of the House.

“Given the constitutional significance of the term of Parliament, this change would be subject to the outcome of a binding referendum.

I am a big supporter of a four year term and also having select committees more able to hold the Government to account (as we saw with the Covid-19 committee). They will both lead to better Government.

But I do not like the idea of the term of Parliament being sometimes three years and sometimes four years. It is confusing and could doom what is otherwise a very good proposal.

I suspect the Government is worried that if people vote for a four-year term, then a future Parliament (actually the House) could change Standing Orders to hand control back to the Government. But this is misguided, as history tells us that Standing Orders are far more enduring than legislation.

I asked the Office of the Clerk if the House has ever voted to amend Standing Orders on a narrow majority of the Government of the Day. This has not happened in living memory. There is a deep tradition of changes being made by consensus. In fact the only non-unanimous vote on Standing Orders was in 2003, and that wasn’t over the substance, but just over not being given more speaking slots in the debate.

So the better way for the Government to proceed would be:

1. Convene the Standing Orders Committee and propose that membership of select committees be proportional to non-executive MPs in the House, but that this SO will only become operative at the start of a four year term.
2. Have the bill only focused on the four year term, triggering a referendum on it at the 2026 election, but only to come into force at the 2029 election (ie the first four year term would be 2029 – 2033)
3. Publicise that a vote for a four year term would automatically see select committee control generally revert to the opposition, allowing better scrutiny of the Government of the Day

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.