Could one "consultation-based community question" per Question Time in the Australian parliament strengthen our democracy?
The need to reform Question Time is widely recognised but we haven't found a solution that aligns incentives for change
Question Time is perhaps the most important tool we have for holding the government to account
Instead, the rules should require one “consultation-based community question” per Question Time
This would work far from perfectly but would be a fair and significant incremental improvement
TLDR: Parliamentary rules should require that of the ~20 questions asked in Question Time each day, at least one is a “consultation-based community question”
Question Time, a period of around one hour set aside on parliamentary sitting days for representatives to ask questions of Ministers, is the centrepiece of federal political discourse in Australia. It’s what the media reports on and what the public sees of federal policy discussion. It’s one of the most important tools we have for holding politicians to account.
It’s dominated today by political point-scoring and it has been widely criticised on this basis, described at best as not fit for purpose and at worst as a farce. A recent inquiry led by the Standing Committee on Procedure recommended several incremental reforms to Question Time, including the introduction of a minimum “five constituency questions from government Members, on a rostered basis” (per sitting) (or questions set aside for backbenchers to question ministers on issues related to their electorate). But these reforms were not enacted, arguably because the major parties don’t have a clear incentive to adopt them, and even if enacted, there’s nothing to prevent a continued strong focus on point-scoring.
I’m proposing that we require a minimum of one “consultation-based community question” (CBC) in each Question Time, which must be agreed through a representative and deliberative consultation with the community that meets certain minimum procedural standards. This could involve, for example, a half-day deliberative forum during which randomly selected (and compensated) constituents from the MP’s electorate consider arguments from two stakeholders (e.g., a university, think tank or local advocacy group) are invited to speak for and against a particular policy proposal and agree on the question they would most like to put to the relevant Minister.
Questions would be fairly allocated to government and non-government members in proportion to their numbers. MPs would receive access to a parliamentary resource to help design the process and a small amount of funding for key expenses, namely third party facilitation and a modest stipend for participants.
The consultations of course wouldn’t be perfect and couldn’t be perfectly monitored (although I do put forward some ideas for basic monitory safeguards that could be put in place), but I would argue that requiring consultation with some minimum standards would likely incrementally improve the diversity and representativeness of questions that are put today.
The opportunity that this creates for MPs to engage their community with a modest amount of resourcing and support creates an incentive for incumbent Members across parties to agree to the reform. In the meantime, there’s nothing to stop the cross-bench from trialing this practice.
This would be a small change that could go a long way to demonstrating the commitment of the government and the cross-bench to “doing politics differently”.
1. Question Time is perhaps the most important tool we have for holding the government to account
Question Time, a period set aside in on parliamentary sitting days in Westminster systems for representatives to ask questions of Ministers, is widely acknowledged as one of the most central features of our democratic system.
By design, it’s intended to keep the government of the day accountable by providing a mechanism for scrutinising its actions. Its potential accountability function makes it “emblematic of all that is best in our democracy.”
In practice, it’s the most important vehicle for communicating about policy from the government and parliament to the Australian public; it’s the centrepiece of Australian political discourse. “The importance of Question Time is demonstrated by the fact that at no other time in a normal sitting day is the House so well attended. Question Time is usually an occasion of special interest not only to Members themselves but to the news media, the radio and television broadcast audience and visitors to the public galleries.” Its direct live viewership isn’t quite in the Matildas’ (our national women’s soccer team) league, but it reaches many more Australians through regular reporting across mainstream media.
It's what the Australian voting public sees through the media. What we see in the media can powerfully affect our voting behavior. Question Time becomes a political theatre in which parties contest votes.
To recap a few key features for those who are not familiar with the basic design:
· Question Time takes place in the House of Representatives and the Senate at 2pm every day Parliament meets
· It lasts about one hour
· In recent years, there have been about 19 questions per sitting
· There are strict time limits on the length of questions and answers
· There are strict rules about the way in which questions can be put; for example, a question cannot be used to debate an issue or argue a point
2. In its current form, Question Time does very little to hold the government to account on issues that affect our lives
The summary verdict: it’s wasting a lot of time
It’s this notion of political theatre that tends to characterise criticism of Question Time – from all sides of politics, academics and other experts and citizens alike – which abounds. It bears repeating some of the major criticisms.
More than 95% of respondents to a recent public survey about Question Time indicated that they thought the House should change how it operates, with criticisms including that it is a “waste of time” and a “farce”. Reflecting on the public’s submissions regarding Question Time, Professor Colleen Lewis reflected that it is “seen as ineffective, not fit for purpose, a waste of taxpayers’ money, eroding trust in the parliament and a place of workplace bullying”.
In recently moving a motion that the relevant parliamentary standing order be amended to read, “an answer must directly answer the question,” Greens Leader Adam Bandt reinforced this critique, seconded by multiple crossbenchers. They variously described Question Time as “an enormous and extraordinary waste of public resources and everyone’s time,” [not making] sense and out of step with the opinions of the general public”, “an urgent matter,” “the major parties’ shouting match”, “unedifying” and “incredibly detrimental to people’s understanding and belief in politicians and in our democratic processes”.
One journalist recently described it like this: “In reality, it’s where questions go to die, suffocated in the sludge of government lines, opposition grandstanding and backbenchers grasping for their moment in the sun”.
Reason 1: today, it’s a point-scoring match and this undermines trust
The rules incentivise political parties to act collectively to maximise political points scored:
Opposition members are incentivised to “try to stress those matters which will embarrass the Government. It is common to see a planned series of questions and follow-up questions from opposition members, especially when there are major issues that the Opposition wishes to pursue.” The most recent sitting week exemplified this approach. Almost every Opposition question asked on 12 February, 13 February and 14 February, related to the “149 criminals the [government] released from immigration detention,” unrelentingly cycling through the issues of how the government was monitoring the relevant individuals, whether they had committed new offences and whether the government had contacted all of the victims.
The Government is incentivised to ask what have been colourfully deemed “Dorothy Dixers”. These are “questions arranged for government Members to ask in order to provide opportunities to put government policies and actions in a favourable light or to embarrass the opposition, a reference to an advice columnist who reputedly wrote her own questions as well as their responses”. The most recent sitting week once again exemplified this tactic; almost every question from Labor MPs began with “How will Labor’s tax cuts help…” and ended with some beneficiary group (Australians under pressure, healthcare workers, tradies, manufacturing workers, amongst others).
The cross-bench typically traverses a more diverse range of issues, absent stronger party political pressures (although of course the cross-bench also includes parties like the Greens). However, cross-bench Members receive the call in proportion to their numbers, so their questions account for a small fraction of the total time spent.
There are some significant indications that this behaviour is undermining community trust. Suffice it to note for now (alongside the fact that trust appears as a central theme in the submissions of most experts to the parliamentary inquiry, as well as the cross-bench’s critique) that according to Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer, we’re currently “straddling the boundary between ‘moderately polarised’ and ‘in danger of severe polarisation’ alongside Canada”, with almost half of Australians saying the nation is more divided today than in the past.
Reason 2: the opportunity cost is substantial
So if it’s being used for political point-scoring, what’s the opportunity cost?
Question Time should be a forum in which citizens can, via their representatives, can engage in relation to critical policy issues. There are at least two components of this ideal.
First, Question Time could be an opportunity to more representatively and fairly tap the universe of policy issues that warrant focus. The universe of policy issues that arguably demand our attention is of course massive, far more expansive than what dominates the headlines. Parties disproportionately focus on issues identified through public opinion research, rarely informed in the ways we’d ideally like to be in a fair process of identifying the issues and reform proposals that get onto the table. As I’ve noted in a previous post, their most trenchant critics would argue that “opinion polling has changed every liberal democracy by turning politics into a contest between two sales teams trying to synthesise a product they believe voters want.” The party political agenda is also shaped disproportionately by money and power. Question Time could be an opportunity for representatives to surface a broader range of issues sourced through deeper and more deliberative consultation with stakeholders in their communities.
Second and relatedly, Question Time could be an opportunity to provide the public, via their elected representatives, with a forum for having a meaningful say in political discourse. Where do you go today to have your say in political discussion? The most common forums for hearing and conversing directly with a politician about policy are town hall meetings or community meetings: open forums for politicians to address and hear questions and feedback from constituents on policy issues. At least in 2019, Bill Shorten was edging towards his hundredth town hall, not an uncommon range for MPs to aspire to. But as I’ve written in another post, town halls are very far from representative, the quality of conversation often falls short (often lacking in meaningful dialogue) and perhaps most significantly, it’s not often that any kind of recommendations of input generated through the discussion is inserted into parliamentary debate in a meaningful way. We need more mechanisms for the Australian public, through their representatives, to meaningfully engage in policy discussion. Question Time could provide one such channel.
3. This requires procedural change, but the procedural changes recommended to date aren’t likely to be enough on their own
It's tempting to attribute this issue to individuals or culture at large, but what the major parties do is what they’re incentivised to do under the current procedural rules and design; their behaviour is a “feature, not a bug.” If I were a politician in one of the major parties, I’d adopt the same approach. I’m deeply skeptical that calls for cultural change without a change in rules will have any impact. As Adam Bandt moved in the motion referred to above, “if it’s within the rules to do that [avoid answering a question], then we’ve got to change the rules”.
The recent (2021) inquiry into Question Time considered several submissions and ultimately put forward several recommendations for how to reform Question Time to address the problems outlined above.
For the purpose of this post, the most important of these include:
Constituency questions: Recommendation 3 proposed that “Question Time consist of a minimum of at least 10 questions from opposition Members; five questions from government Members, on a rostered basis; five constituency questions from government Members, on a rostered basis; and one question from a non-aligned Member. Constituency questions are defined in the report as questions or time period set aside for backbenchers from all sides to question ministers on issues related to their electorate”
Rostering of questions: As part of this recommendation, that questions from government Members should be on a fair and rostered basis with all government backbenchers knowing in advance when they will have the opportunity to ask a question
Questions from the public: The submissions, not ultimately adopted by the Committee, that the public could propose questions to some extent directly (e.g., from those watching in the gallery, or via some kind of petition process); the Committee nonetheless recommended that while only Members should ask questions during Question Time, “Members should be able to source questions from their electorate; the changes recommended in this report may give more flexibility and scope to ask questions of specific relevance to electorates”
While these reforms could in theory surface a wider array of issues, I’d argue that they’re not likely to generate much change in the way things work for two reasons:
1. Even if adopted, they don’t incentivise behavior change from the parties and/or they don’t surface issues that can be said to representatively reflect the views of the community
2. There isn’t a clear incentive for the government to accept the recommendations (as has been borne out already)
On point (1), there is nothing I can see in the recommendations to stop government from continuing to use constituency questions, even if fairly rostered, as opportunities to ask Dorothy Dixers. Several academic experts recognised as much in their responses to this proposal. Professor Lewis considered they could work “as long as they were ‘not really another way to ask a Dorothy Dixer’”. Similarly, Dr Serban considered that party teamwork is unlikely to be avoided altogether. Even if party teamwork were to some extent avoided, for the reasons noted above, we need to change the way we consult the community to make it more representative and deliberative. Direct questions from the public similarly couldn’t be said to be representative of the community and it would seem unfair to allocate so much real estate to one individual.
The former government’s response to the report somewhat compellingly attests to point (2) above. Their reply to every recommendation read “the Government does not support the recommendation, considering the current arrangements for question time is [sic] working well”. Why? Without any other changes, the recommendation asks the government to forfeit an opportunity to ask Dorothy Dixers without any clear benefit to incumbents or the party. (You might argue that backbenchers get the benefit of reporting back to their constituency on their question but this is likely to be pretty diluted if they’re not carrying out genuine consultation to source the relevant question).
4. Instead, the rules should require one “consultation-based community question” per Question Time
Criteria: Any reform put forward should generate representative questions and align incentives
Mirroring the above reasons why existing reforms alone are not likely to work, what’s needed instead is a reform that:
1. Incentivises or otherwise requires MPs to surface a broader set of issues that can be said to legitimately represent what matters to citizens in their community, going beyond point-scoring
2. Has a chance of being enacted i.e., aligns with the government’s incentives and is implementable
At least one question should be sourced from consultation with one’s constituency that meets certain minimum standards
Here’s my proposal: of the nineteen odd questions without notice that are asked in Question Time each sitting day, at least one has to be a consultation-based community question. These are questions that MPs have to source through a short process of consultation with citizens in their electorate that meets certain standards:
Consultation-based community questions (CBCs) are allocated to government and non-government members in proportion to their numbers, rostered in advance so MPs know when their opportunity is coming up. With an average of 67 sitting days each year spread over 20 sitting weeks, nearly half of MPs would get to ask a question. (In an ideal world, you might bump up the minimum number of questions to two questions, but for now, you could assume parties allocate questions amongst themselves and CBCs questions are randomly allocated to independents. Independents have greater latitude to determine the content of their questions so could pursue the method in any event; more on this below)
Consultation must meet some minimum standards that yield incrementally more representative and diverse questions for Ministers. It would not purport to be perfect, and more work would need to be done to produce a simple set of rules and guidelines for MPs and for citizens
Representativeness, ideally achieved through some form of random sampling of the electorate and compensation of participants
Deliberative characteristics: participants receive information from a balanced set of sources (for example, a certain number of stakeholders making submissions “for” and “against” a given policy and asked to vet each other’s proposals); they receive the chance to discuss with each other and deliberate on the question to be asked and are compensated for their time; the deliberation is a reasonable length (e.g., half a day); the MP commits in advance to ask the question decided on by the community
Two key process are adopted to promote compliance, with the Parliamentary Procedure Committee responsible for oversight:
MPs must publish a short written report on the process describing the method, costs and outputs
MPs must include in their report and briefly state before asking their question the following metrics
Participants’ rating of the process, along dimensions of representation and fairness
Representativeness of the participants, at a minimum along dimensions of political affiliation, age, gender
In order to help meet these standards, MPs receive access to a parliamentary resource (in the Department of Parliamentary Services) who is trained to support with random sampling, recruitment of experts and process design, and a small amount of funding to cover key external costs, including facilitation and a stipend for participants
Criterion #1: This is likely to generate representative questions that go beyond point-scoring
Firstly, this proposal acknowledges the substantial constraints on the questions that can be put in Question Time and the relevant answers. It doesn’t contemplate generating lengthy debate or deliberation in parliament, or serving as an open forum for raising whatever the issues the community identifies without regard to procedural rules. These include, amongst others, that the duration of each question is limited to 30 seconds (45 for non-aligned Members), questions must relate to matters for which a Minister is responsible or officially connected, cannot relate to opposition plans (although the “alternative approaches” trick remains common) and cannot contain statements of fact unless they can be authenticated and are strictly necessary to render the question intelligible.
However, this leaves enormous space for asking probing questions on policy issues. These could include a few different types of questions that serve to hold the government to account on issues that matter to the community:
Questions on issues that are currently in the spotlight, but which seek to raise specific policy options other than those currently being pursued by major parties or justification for the government’s current approach in light of evidence (e.g., from an inquiry)
Questions that seek to spotlight policy issues or problems that aren’t currently in the headlines
A deliberative process could generate these kinds of probing questions in several ways. It’s worth noting first that it’s also relatively common to use deliberative processes to agree on questions as outputs. It’s also critical to emphasize that this process would not be and would not purport to be perfect and immune from some level of political gaming. There is still significant latitude for MPs to frame the issue for discussion. Realistically, the critical mechanism for monitoring procedural integrity would be participants’ self-report of the procedure’s credibility, having regard to a set of common guardrails and rules (as noted above, going to balanced sources and cross-verification of information). But conferring responsibility on a relatively representative sample of the community could go a long way to reducing gamesmanship and surfacing genuine issues.
MPs would have significant latitude to frame issues for the community’s consideration and the lead the setting of the agenda, as long as the process they run could be viewed as balanced and deliberative. For example, they might frame the consultation around:
Asking questions about a current issue in the spotlight, like the stage 3 tax cuts. The MP could set this as the broad topic for the community’s question, and invite submissions from one expert stakeholder who supports the current approach, and one stakeholder who has a different view. The community would then seek to agree on a question they still have about the policy, in light of this information
Sourcing proposals that surface issues not currently in the spotlight (but still within a relevant Minister’s portfolio). The MP could seek out submissions from think tanks / universities at different points on the political spectrum for the one new policy idea that the Minister responsible for a particular portfolio should consider but which hasn’t receive major political attention to date
The community would then deliberate on a question to put to the Minister based on this information.
A few recent examples of questions (or parts of questions) asked by the cross-bench illustrate the range of permissible questions that have surfaced broader issues:
a) “Last year a parliamentary inquiry recommended banning online gambling ads. During the year of that inquiry, big gambling companies made political donations of $600,000. You've spent seven months meeting with powerful companies that make money from gambling ads. Today new research was released, again showing the dangers of social media influencers promoting gambling to kids. Will you listen to the community and ban online gambling ads?” (Kate Chaney, February 2024)
b) “In 2014, you told this House that independent cost-benefit analysis of infrastructure proposals was necessary to ensure that there is proper value for taxpayers for infrastructure investment and that we get the right infrastructure investment to boost productivity. Does the Prime Minister still hold this view, and if not, why not?” (Allegra Spender, March 2023)
c) “Will the treasurer tell the House how can the government offer additional childcare relief for those earning up to $530,000 while removing the low and middle income tax offsets for individuals and families earning less than $130,000 who need tax relief the most during a cost-of-living crisis? How will the government provide immediate relief for those families struggling, like those in Fowler?” (Dai Le, November 2022)
Criterion #2: This also has a practical chance of being enacted
This reform aligns with government incentives insofar as it provides MPs with the potential to connect with their electorate in a positive way, particularly going beyond just the “usual suspects” in traditional community consultation (including, for example, civically minded older Australians), and with resourcing to do this
Regarding implementation, I’d argue that the monitoring process is relatively light-touch and straightforward, balancing a reasonable level of procedural integrity with practicality and resource constraints
Perhaps most significantly, there is nothing to stop independents, unconstrained by partisan affiliation, from trialing this approach and demonstrating its value
5. This would work far from perfectly but would be a fair and significant incremental improvement
A few notes on some other arguments you might raise against this reform:
It’s too hard to define the guardrails for the consultation process in a way that avoids gaming
The consultation process absolutely won’t be perfect. But defining some objective requirements, such as use of random selection and compensation to recruit constituents, and inviting stakeholders of opposing views on an issue in equal number, could go a long way toward making the process fairer.
Given that constituents are deliberating on questions to put to Ministers, and not any kind of policy recommendations, the stakes are also much lower. Even if MPs find a way to bias the consultation to some extent in their favour, the question is likely to be incrementally more balanced and representative of the community’s views than it might be without this process.
Significant work would of course need to be done to develop the guardrails.
This undermines the work already being done outside of Question Time
It’s true that “Question Time is not typical of the range of proceedings of the House, which is generally much calmer and more moderate”. But this is all the more reason to ensure the public have at least some visibility of a less hyper-partisan perspective.
You might also argue that this reform would just bring more issues that are being quietly addressed in the background into the hyper-partisan public arena. But the deliberative quality of the consultation that it requires should curtail the extent to which questioning is hyper-partisan.
Representation is MPs’ bread and butter. Requiring guardrails is condescending and unnecessary
MPs engage in consultation all the time. But without some procedural guardrails, it’s very easy to game or do consultation in a tokenistic way.
It would be too costly and difficult to implement
My estimation is that $10-15k would be enough to support implementation of some key procedural conditions (e.g., third party facilitation, compensation of randomly selected participants). Even if a dedicated parliamentary resource were provided to support process design, the total cost of this reform across 67 sitting days would be in the vicinity of $1M.