Opposition scrutiny of the Covid-19 response now has only one outlet and it's controlled by Labour MPs who have been less than willing to share power in the past, Marc Daalder writes
COMMENT: Ashley Bloomfield's determination that the current Covid-19 outbreak renders travel by 120 MPs to Wellington unsafe created more problems than it solved for the Government.
With the House unable to sit in even a physically distanced manner, select committees are now the only outlet for parliamentary scrutiny. The Opposition's push to reconstitute the Epidemic Response Committee has fallen on deaf ears and Chris Hipkins wearing the hat of Leader of the House has decided that the regular select committees will fill the void.
This is the main problem for the Government. In extraordinary times like these, there's unanimous agreement that the Opposition must have time and space to hold the Government to account.
But the way the Labour-controlled committees have been run over the past 10 months has seen little time for questioning of ministers or officials on a range of issues. The situation is bad enough that the Greens have bonded with National in unsuccessfully calling for Treasury officials to be hauled before the Finance and Expenditure Committee to answer questions about house price modelling.
It is however the Health Committee which has been the location of some of the worst abuse of Labour's parliamentary majority. Discontent with the lack of time to question Hipkins or Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield on a range of issues has led to every party bar Labour supporting the recall of the Epidemic Response Committee. And that was before there was an active outbreak of Covid-19.
The grievances range from the 20-minute presentation on Covid-19 101 that ate up the committee's time in April - earning a rebuke from Speaker Trevor Mallard - to the fact that Bloomfield and Hipkins are now only called before the committee once every two months. That's enough time for a new variant of the virus to develop, a couple of border lapses to occur, and a half-dozen port workers to be vaccinated.
"Sadly, the Health Committee has not operated particularly effectively so far. We've made multiple attempts to have ministers and particularly officials appear on multiple occasions and that has been stymied at almost every turn," Chris Bishop, National's Covid-19 Response spokesperson said.
Hipkins has made assurances that the Opposition will have greater rein of committee proceedings over the next week.
"Ministers and senior government officials will be making themselves available to appear before virtual select committees over the coming week. Those meetings will be televised on Parliament TV and we expect opposition members to have the bulk of the allotted time to ask questions," he said.
Bishop said he welcomed that pledge, but reiterated that National's initial preference would have been to see Parliament resume and its second choice was the Epidemic Response Committee.
He also wouldn't be drawn on whether he thought Labour MPs who have a majority on the committees will follow through with Hipkins' promise.
"That's ultimately over to the Government. They have a majority, the numbers are with them."
The next week - and possibly a few more to come, depending on Cabinet's alert level decision on Friday - will therefore be a test for these Labour MPs.
The Government will be eager to avoid the appearance of suppressing scrutiny in select committees that are already seriously constrained by the health situation. But a verbal commitment to fair play hasn't filtered down into action at the select committee level in the past.
Ministers and the Opposition alike will be hoping that the differences in this situation - including the active outbreak and the much greater media and public focus on the committees - will lead to different outcomes than were seen over the past 10 months.
