Moroney Sue: Standing Orders Inquiry into Parliament’s Legislative Response to Future National Emergencies — Instruction to Regulations Review CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Standing Orders Inquiry into Parliament’s Legislative Response to Future National Emergencies — Instruction to Regulations Review Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19758. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):I intend to make a reasonably short contribution on the review of the Standing Orders which would reflect my relatively short period of time on the Standing Orders Committee. I came on to this committee part-way through this process and therefore missed many of the submissions which I felt was a great shame because certainly there were some very important contributions that had been made.Before I talk in substance to the review I would just like to make a couple of acknowledgments. First of all to you Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson for your fine valedictory speech yesterday. All the best for your future and the next journey in your life that you are about to take. Can I also acknowledge Fay Paterson who is in the Clerk’s chair at present and congratulate her on her 25 years in this Parliament. I congratulate her on her final day of this sitting in this Parliament and wish her well for the next adventure in her life as well. Thank you Fay.Hon Trevor Mallard: She looks the same.SUE MORONEY: Yes well my learned colleague Trevor Mallard—well he is not learned—my honourable colleague Trevor Mallard says that she has not changed a bit and she would probably be alone in terms of that observation in this Chamber.I want to reflect on a couple of the Standing Orders provisions because certainly for me when I came into this place I was quite a stranger to parliamentary process and I can well understand people who may be listening to this debate wondering what on earth the importance of the Standing Orders is. Not only do they guide what occurs in this place but they also have a very practical application. I want to use a couple of examples of some of the things that came before the committee for discussion with this review. I will give some examples of a piece of legislation that I have been intimately involved with to show how the review applies to that.One of the issues that was raised by submitters that the committee could not find a way forward on—as many other members have already said this is a committee that acts on consensus. Therefore by definition the recommendations of the Standing Orders review are often pretty conservative on that basis because it does require the agreement of all the parties sitting round the table before we can make progress. None the less we have made some progress and it is incremental progress that will continue in future parliaments. The issue that came before the committee that I had a close and personal brush with was the issue of financial veto. There were submissions from members of the public around the idea that if a bill has majority support in Parliament a Government should be able to put a financial veto on such a bill.Louise Upston: Who pays the bills?SUE MORONEY: Well it was an issue that was raised.Louise Upston: Who has to manage the Budget?SUE MORONEY: Pardon?Louise Upston: Who has to manage the Budget? The Government of the day.SUE MORONEY: Well that is exactly the issue that I am just about to raise actually Mrs Upston. The members opposite are very very nervous about discussion of the financial veto and I understand that. I get that. What submitters said was that they had an issue to raise around democracy and how that actually played out. Some submitters I understand raised the prospect of—because the bill of course was the bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks. People said: “Well look actually yes you do have a Government that has a mandate to run the books and to make decisions on what the finances are spent on.” but on this occasion one of the votes in favour of the bill was from a party that was voting to give the Government supply and confidence a party that actually gave the mandate to the Government of the day to make decisions about the priorities in which it spent its Budget. So that was a really interesting dilemma—a very interesting dilemma I think—that that bill posed because here were some of the votes that gave the Government the right to set its Budget actually voting for some of that money to be spent on a measure that the Government opposed. I think that that caused a really interesting dilemma which I do not know that this Parliament has ever seen before.Hon Anne Tolley: Oh rubbish!SUE MORONEY: Well Mrs Tolley says: “Oh rubbish!” but I am not sure that there has been a situation where a vote that has actually been used in the main for supply and confidence has been used to vote for another measure that a financial veto was going to be used on. So it was a very interesting issue.I think that during the course of this debate we have been trying to focus on issues of democracy issues of how we improve democracy and issues of how we continue in the future. It has not been a controversial debate but I noticed that the minute we discussed the issue of the financial veto the Government benches became quite hostile to the idea of us actually having something to say in debating this in this context. However it is right and it is proper to do so. It was raised through the select committee and it was an issue that the committee gave some consideration to. Where we landed I think was also right and proper. Where we landed is that it is the right of a Government to make determinations in this area and that Governments should use that veto infrequently. In fact the report says that the use of this procedure has been relatively restrained and I think that probably is correct. But it was also correct for the committee to consider that issue and wonder whether we had that in exactly the right place. We did come to the conclusion that it is for now but I think it is something that as MMP continues to test the processes of this Parliament we will continue to think about.The other issue that had a direct bearing on the procedure of that bill through this House was the new provision—now codified through the review of the Standing Orders that we are debating here today—for a Speaker to grant compassionate leave. That was a relatively new policy that was brought in and it is now being codified under this review of the Standing Orders. I welcome that because I think it has worked well. One of the times that we got to test that literally on its feet was during the second reading of the bill to extend paid parental leave to 26 weeks. When we had a bill that was passing through its second reading by one vote every single one of those votes was important but because of the Standing Orders in this Parliament we had a situation where one of the parties that was supporting the bill had a member of its caucus leave the precinct and that therefore meant it could not vote legitimately at its full strength. How ironic it was that we were debating extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks and the reason that the member of Parliament had legitimately needed to leave the parliamentary precinct was to attend the birth of his first grandchild. It is that sort of irony which actually happens quite regularly in this parliamentary debating chamber that makes it a very very interesting place to be operating in.Of course what we tested on the floor of the debating chamber right there and then was the ability of the Speaker to grant compassionate leave on those grounds. It was something that had not been tested before. It was tested that night and I am pleased to report that it was tested successfully. Compassionate leave was granted by the Speaker and that member’s vote was therefore able to be counted in the vote. How it got cast is a different matter entirely and I will not go into that because the members opposite are already getting tetchy enough at the mere mention of the paid parental leave bill which always does cause them quite a bit of angst.In conclusion I hope that people listening can see the practical application of the issues that were debated by the Standing Orders Committee. I hope that they will be able to see how it makes a real difference to the way the debating chamber operates and how laws are made in this country for the good of its people. There are areas where we can always make more progress but it is a start and as we always do in each Parliament we will continue to refine and improve the processes. Thank you.Motions agreed to.