The week in the House What happens next?

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 2

The week in the House What happens next?

By

CEDRIC MENTIPLAY

The Budget debate, which monopolised the last week, is expected to end on Tuesday. But nobody is quite sure what will take its place.

This became apparent yesterday when the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) gave his usual short forecast of the week ahead, but admitted that the Public Expenditure Committee had not completed its deliberations on the estimates of the Prime Minister’s Department, the Treasury, and Foreign Affairs. The resulting wrangle can be disposed of only when the committee gets on with the job and clears the relevant estimates, but the atmosphere in which it is being asked to do this is hardly conducive to coolheaded thinking or long-term planning. However, the emergency will not really arise until Thursday, when a House, prepared to discuss estimates, will learn what is I available. The committee can make its own arrangements (about sitting-times, so long as it does not sit during the! sitting-hours of Parliament. As there is also a “gentle-! men’s agreement” restriction! against interfering with the! “long week-end,” the com-! mittee does not really have l much time.

The last week was not a (bright one. The Budget dejbate was hustled on, with (the usual break on Wednesday for members’ notices of (motion. This produced a (clash on South Island fortunes, about which there; seem to be as many views as on the abortion issue. I The Speaker (Mr Harrijson) is still managing to get (through 20 questions, with I their answers, in the 40 min[utes allowed daily, but the number of questions and) supplemehtaries is ex-1 panding.

‘ Similarly, the notices of 'motion are proliferating. By the end of Friday’s sitting there were eight printed pages of them, totalling more than 60, most of them doomed never to be debated.

Opposition members seem to have found another way to add to the work of departments and of the Government Printing Office. Thursday’s Order Paper was a large document of 40 printed pages. Apart from the eight pages taken up by notices of motion, 28 carried merely written questions, plus the answers to some of them.

On examining the cause of this inflation, it is seen that some Opposition members had asked a series of questions requiring long and exhaustive statements. For instance, Mrs Whetu Tirika-tene-Sullivan (Lab., Southern Maori) had asked the Minister of Works (Mr W. L. Young) a whole series of questions referring to the cost of motorways (some of them well out of her electorate) over a number of years. The replies covered four pages. Other Labour members asked complicated questions of the Minister of Statistics (Mr Templeton) on building permits. The answers occupied three more pages. Mr C. R. Marshall (Lab., Wanganui) trumped in with a request for lists of all the savings-bank trustees appointed by the Governor-;

General since December 1, 1972. The reply to this single question occupied nearly four printed folio pages.

Most of this information, I learn, is readily available from the Statistician’s Office or from other sources. The rest can be obtained quite! easily by someone with the; status of a member of Par-: liament. Why, therefore, is I this expensive and laboriousj means adopted, and to what! use is the information to be) put? Even publication in the! Order Paper would add con-! siderably to the work of the! Government Printer.

Whatever happens to the [estimates, next week will be well filled with legislation, which will also be dealt with during the afternoons, with the exception of members’ private motions on Wednesday and the promised estimates on Thursday Eleven general bills are’on the Order Paper, headed by the second-reading debates of the Bush Workers Amendment Bill and the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council Amendment Bill. Third on the list is the continuation of the committee stage of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Amendment Bill, which should be reached quite quickly.

Towed away A Korean fishing boat, berthed in Auckland since its crew complained it was | not seaworthy, was towed I away by a sister ship ’ yesterday. The Nam Hae 237 I has been in Auckland since (the end of April. She will be I towed to the owner’s base in jPago Pago. — (P.A.). | Lottery draw I Golden Kiwi jackpot lotjtery No. 101 will be drawn on (Monday. The $lOO,OOO jack(pot, if struck, will come from j a “kitty” of SIOS,OOO.—(PA).