Formulaic answers

by frog

A while ago the Greens got a leaked copy of Labour’s strategy for answering oral questions in the house.  The funny thing is that, after having watched a few question times, you don’t really need a copy to work out what Labour is going to answer to any given question.  Yesterday when Jeanette was helping Russel with a practice run through of his primary question to the Minister of Transport she gave, off the top of her head, an almost word for word replica of the answer the Minister gave to Russel’s question.

National as the largest opposition party gets most of the parliamentary questions so most questions go something like this:

National MP stands up and asks Crosby-Textor-esque script.  Labour minister stands up either faux outraged or in faux hysterics at the the stupidity of that member and manages to fit most of these things into his or her response:

• Attack National for hidden agenda
• Talk about how bad things were in the 1990s and how most problems today stem from that
• Comment on the questioner’s intelligence or physical appearance
• Shake with outrage at having one’s authority questioned (Some minsters can pull of this act better than others)
• Change the topic
• Insult Gerry Brownlee
• Await a patsy from the back benches where you get to laugh at something stupid a National Party MP said at some point in their history.
• Try a little bit more outraged shaking.

If however the question comes from another party that Labour sees as a coalition partner or potential coalition partner, their response is far more paternalist – ‘Well I’d would think that too if were not for all the immense skills and knowledge I have available at my finger tips as a cabinet minister’:

• ‘That is a good point the member raises…’
• ‘The member should be well aware that this is problem dear to my heart and I have in place a range of government strategies to deal with it.’
• provide a list of tangential achievements
• ‘However underfunding in the 1990s is the cause’. (Remember 1999?)
• It’s all that nasty National’s fault (change point of attack, because it is not like we have had an MMP environment now for 12 years)
• Await National’s supplementary question that allows them to revert to the first strategy above.
• ‘But you’re a lovely little party aren’t you’ (pat on the head)

I assume they think this strategy works because it has worked on their backbench.

The interesting thing is that in recent months questions from Green Party MPs, such as Russel’s yesterday have repeatedly extracted real (as opposed to faux) anger from Labour Cabinet ministers.  I reckon that as they move to the centre, to protect themselves from National Party incursions into their voting territory, they are finding it harder to articulate why they have shifted from the ideals that got them elected in the first place.  Often when a Green MP stands up espousing social justice, fairness, the environment , human rights or community well-being, cabinet ministers get angry because it exposes how far they have drifted. And the thing is they are worried that voters are going to notice that drift too.