Three governing-party MPs in committee. If they are doing their jobs properly, even MPs that support the government will be asking tough questions of the executive. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Parliament has just one sitting block left. The first week will be focused on government legislation, after which there will be a week of tidy-ups and farewells. But prior to those is a long scrutiny week.
Scrutiny of the executive (government) is one of Parliament's core roles.
It includes asking ministers thousands of questions and facilitating public feedback on new legislation, and happens across the term.
But for intense, dedicated scrutiny of government plans and performance there are two concentrated periods of Select Committee scrutiny annually.
The first scrutiny week is about grilling ministers on their budget plans, and the second focuses on the performance of government entities and occurs at the end of the year.
This year these dedicated weeks of scrutiny have replaced a much more haphazard and political exercise, in which short sessions, absent ministers and ministers shielding departmental heads were common.
The new approach is more or less compulsory for ministers, and includes longer, more organised sessions, with much more planning and pre-briefings. It all makes for a long week of interrogation, and it begins Monday.
A list of the hearings with links to live video streams is available at the bottom of this article.
The House For Sun 1 Dec
A lot of the Select Committees' effectiveness in conducting the scrutiny will come from around 60 pre-scrutiny briefings from the Office of the Auditor General's sector managers.
The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) had also commissioned financial audits of each entity.
"They need to have the right information from those agencies to be able to inform them about what has actually taken place over the previous year," Sector Manager Lindsey Gibson said.
"If the information isn't providing what actually those outcomes are from the agency, then the parliamentarians aren't able to ask the right questions, which the public need to know, in terms of how we're performing as a government as a whole."
Gibson and her fellow sector managers had also been working with committees to create structured agendas - to make sure crucial things don't get missed.
That might all seem unusually helpful, but the AOG was an adjunct of Parliament.
The AOG was one of the three Officers of Parliament, and so worked directly for the Parliament, not the government.
Inquiring into governments' spending and performance was core to its function.
"As an Officer of Parliament, we're independent from the Executive," said OAG director Mark Evans.
"We're independent advisors to help Parliament hold government to account in a way that has the trust and confidence of the public. It's an essential part of the public accountability system," Gibson said.
The ability for Parliament to really get into the nitty-gritty of each department's finances, plans and outcomes was one of the upsides of a Parliamentary Democracy, where the Executive was responsible to the Parliament from which it arises.
You might pity the bosses of the various departments and agencies that are up for scrutiny this week, as they are up for actual scrutiny.
In the past some might have been on the hook for as little as 30 minutes, and have their minister fill most of that time with bloviation. That will no longer work.
"The scrutiny week is really, really important," Mark Evans said, "because we used to have quite an episodic kind of scrutiny where things got political quite often. There wasn't a lot of preparation. Sometimes, for billions of dollars, you'd have a half-hour hearing.
"We can [now] have longer hearings. We can have agendas for those hearings. We can have in-depth hearings. That means there's time to look at both the financial and the non-financial side, so that the public and Parliament can tell whether the money's not just being spent, but what's being achieved with it."
With more time there was less pressure for the entire conversation to be politically aggressive - where opposition MPs tried to create a news moment, and governing-party MPs circled the wagons.
Now those agency heads got to discuss what was working and what was not in more depth.
"It's not just the numbers that tell us how well an agency is doing," Lindsey Gibson said, "We need to be looking at - what are the metrics they have in place, to show that they are achieving over a longer term. What are the actual outcomes that we're seeing from that money that is being spent? And that could be not just a metric, but also a narrative in their annual reporting, to say 'and these are the outcomes we are seeing'."
All of this helped Parliament stay on top of government, but it also forced agencies to get usefully reflective and look for improvements and measurable, achievable outcomes. All of which helped achieve the AOG's mission - to improve trust and promote value.
Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Watch the Scrutiny Hearings: Organised by Subject, with links to live video
All the hearings are listed below, by topic.
(You will notice that the committees do not meet every day, but instead "share" the week between them. The reason is that there are too few MPs in Parliament, so MPs are often members of two different committees. Committees are structured to allow this.)
Social Services
- Mon - 9.30am - 5:20pm: The Independent Children's Monitor-Aroturuki Tamariki; Ministry for Pacific Peoples; Ministry for Women
- Tues - 8am - 1.30pm: Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities; Ministry of Housing and Urban Development
- Weds - 8.30am - 6pm: Ministry of Disabled People; Ministry of Social Development; Children and Young People's Commission
- Fri - 8.30am - 5pm: Oranga Tamariki; Heritage NZ; Ministry of Culture and Heritage; Arts Council of New Zealand
Social Services and Community Committee live stream page.
Justice
- Tues - 2pm - 5pm: Electoral Commission
- Thurs - 9am - 5.30pm: Ministry of Justice; NZ Police; Department of Corrections
Justice Committee live stream page.
Health
- Mon - 1pm - 5pm: Pharmac; Associate Minister of Health (Pharmac)
- Tues - 8.30am - 1pm: NZ Blood Service; Minister of Health; Ministry of Health
- Weds - 9.40am - 6pm: Associate Minister of Health; Minister of Health; Te Whatu Ora
Health Committee live stream page.
Education & Workforce
- Mon - 2pm - 5.20pm: ACC
- Tues - 9am - 12.20pm: Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety; Minister for ACC; Worksafe
- Weds - 9am - 6pm: Ministry of Education; Tertiary Education Commission; Minister of Tertiary Education and Skills; Minister of Education, and Associate Minister of Education (joint)
Education and Workforce Committee live stream page.
Finance & Expenditure
- Tues - 8.45am - 11.40am: Minister of Finance (Financial Statements of the Government); Toka Tū Ake Earthquake Commission; Southern Response Earthquake Services Limited
- Weds - 9am - 5.20pm: Treasury; Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Finance and Expenditure Committee live stream page.
Economic Development, Science and Innovation
- Tues - 2pm - 6pm: Commerce Commission; Callaghan Innovation
- Thurs - 8am - 6pm: Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; NZ Post; NZ Capital Growth Partners; Retirement Commissioner
Development, Science and Innovation Committee live stream page.
Māori Affairs
- Tues - 8am - 1pm: Tupu Tonu - Ngāpuhi Investment Fund; Te Puni Kōkiri
- Weds - 8am - 4.30pm: Te Arawhiti; Te Māngai Pāho; Te Taura Whiri; Te Tumu Paeroa - The Māori Trustee
Māori Affairs Committee live stream page.
Environment
- Tues - 2pm - 6pm: Department of Conservation
- Thurs - 9am - 5pm: Ministry for the Environment; Climate Change Commission
Environment Committee live stream page.
Primary Production
Primary Production Committee live stream page.
Transport and Infrastructure
- Tues - 2pm - 7pm: Transpower
- Thurs - 8am - 6pm: Minister for Transport; NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi; Kiwirail
Transport and Infrastructure Committee live stream page.
Governance and Administration
- Tues - 3.45pm - 4.55pm: Public Service Commission
- Tues - 9am - 9am - 1pm: Fire and Emergency NZ (FENZ)
- Weds - 9am - 5.10pm: Department of Internal Affairs; Taumata Arowai; Digital Executive Board; Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and National Emergency Management Agency (joint); Stats NZ
Governance and Administration Committee live stream page.
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade
- Tues - 2pm - 6pm: Ministry of Defence and NZ Defence Force (joint); Minister of Defence and Minister for Veterans' Affairs (joint)
- Thurs - 9am - 6.30pm: Minister of Foreign Affairs; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; New Zealand Antarctic Institute; NZ Trade and Enterprise; Minister of Customs; NZ Customs; Border Executive Board
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee live stream page.
An updated calendar of hearings is available on the Parliament website here.
The officials appearing before committees each day is on the Parliament website here.
RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.