Brownlee Gerry; Prosser Richard; Hipkins ChrisQUESTIONS TO MEMBERSAdherence to Standing OrdersHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is the right of members to ask questions to other members who are responsible for bills. Those questions are more tightly constrained by Speakers' rulings but are also very much constrained by the Standing Orders. When a question is put it has to deal specifically with matters that relate to the House. The first question could not possibly relate to the House because the question on the bill has not at this point been put to the House. If you go through the rest of these questions there are many occasions where they fall short of the Standing Orders but I would particularly suggest that question No. 5 is a very deliberate breach of Standing Order 380(1)(c). I think that while we would not at all want to impede people asking questions of someone who is responsible for a bill we would like to see that adherence to the Standing Orders. The other point I would make is that it is somewhat ironic that we are unlikely to get to this bill today because of the time we are going to spend on members' questions.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): With regard to the Leader of the House's first point about a question in fact the bill has been through a certain number of stages and the question is about indications of support not the votes in the House. The other point about question No. 5 and the reference that I presume the Minister is referring to—calling it communist"—and referencing Standing Order 380(1)(c)"discreditable references to the House or any member of Parliament or any offensive or unparliamentary expression." is that whereas many people might disagree with the notion of communism it is actually a valid political viewpoint.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The last part of his point of order was not really a point of order but I rule that—I am just quoting the Standing Orders—a question to a member must relate to business before the House of which he or she has charge. There is no requirement that a motion has to have been moved in respect of the business before questions may be asked about it and the question asks for an opinion or a policy in respect of a bill—that is a matter for the MP—that they are in charge of.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That is an interesting ruling but there is also a Standing Order that makes it quite clear that you cannot pre-empt a decision of the House. So a question that asks for what support there is for the bill in the context of the question being allowed in the House clearly invites the member to pre-empt the business of the House and that is in breach of the Standing Orders.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): The Standing Order that the Minister refers to extends to all business before the House and not specifically questions to members. If the Minister wants that question to be the standard for question time that would also preclude Government members from asking patsy questions about the likely decisions of the House with regard to Government bills.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): That is completely unreasonable for you to be asked to rule on that because the Government does not ask itself questions about bills; it asks itself questions about policy. That is the point of having a question time. This of course is a situation where a member is being asked to pre-empt the House's decision by trying to coerce a degree of support from his own scant knowledge of how the vote is likely to go.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. I appreciate the advice from all sides of the House and speaking of pre-emption this exact word content has been asked on a number of other occasions with respect to members' bills—questions to members. The question is in order and I will call on Ria Bond to ask it."