Due to the increasing demands on the work of the Office of the Clerk in an environment of funding constraints, the efficiency of some key Parliament functions could suffer.
A select committee has heard that due to the increasing demands on the work of the Office of the Clerk in an environment of funding constraints, the efficiency of some key Parliament functions could suffer.
The bodies that run Parliament have effectively been crying poor for years, but are without a minister in cabinet to argue their case. However their message was clear to Parliament's Governance & Administration Select Committee last night as they discussed the Annual Review of the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and the Annual Review of the Parliamentary Service.
The Clerk of the House, David Wilson appeared before the committee alongside the Chief Executive of the Parliamentary Service, Rafael Gonzalez-Montero and Parliament's Speaker, Gerry Brownlee.
The staff in the politically-neutral Office of the Clerk perform a range of functions critical to the Parliament system, including facilitating the operations of the House and select committees, providing specialist advice on legislation, and producing Hansard. However cost pressures on the Office are rising. What's more, the Office falls within the Government's wide gamut of government organisations anticipating indicative spending cuts.
Stretched
As a result of recommendations following the regular Standing Orders Review in the last Parliamentary term, new mechanisms for applying scrutiny to the Executive have been introduced for this term, such as mandatory scrutiny weeks, as well as scrutiny plans and review briefings.
This creates an even larger workload for the Office of the Clerk. One of the committee's members, National's Cameron Brewer, asked Wilson how it would affect the Office of the Clerk's budget.
"It does make it challenging. And there was a range of other changes to Parliamentary Process suggested at the last review of Standing Orders where we just had to say to the Committee we couldn't afford to support those," Wilson admitted.
"These ones, the most significant changes made, yeah they do stretch the Office of the Clerk's resources. We'll be alright for this financial year, but it remains to be seen for future ones. We're really in a position where we can't take on additional functions, unless they come with funding."
National MP Cameron Brewer in Parliament's Governance & Administration select committee, 4 March 2024…