State Government breaching its own time limit rule for answering questions on notice in Parliament

More than a quarter of questions submitted on notice to the State Government are being answered late or not at all, breaching the Liberal’s self-imposed 30-day rule, the Opposition says.

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More than a quarter of questions submitted on notice to the State Government are being answered late or not at all, breaching the Liberal’s self-imposed 30-day rule, the Opposition says.

The figures, taken from an online Government database, have also exposed an inability to police the time-limit regulation because penalties for infringements have not been established.

Speaker Vincent Tarzia has called a parliamentary committee meeting to address the loophole after receiving an official complaint from Labor.

Opposition treasury spokesman Stephen Mullighan lodged a grievance over Premier Steven Marshall’s response times to questions submitted on notice.

Opposition treasury spokesman Stephen Mullighan has lodged a grievance over the Premier’s response times.

Labor says of 402 questions placed on the notice paper to November 9 this year, 112 have been answered late and three are yet to receive a response.

However, the Government rejects the figures and says when incorporating questions on notice from Question Time, it has answered over 80 per cent of queries and all remaining, except one, fall within the 30-day time limit.

It is unclear how many of those answers were provided within the regulated time frame.

Mr Mullighan says Mr Marshall, in particular, has only answered six questions on time out of 48 asked of him within his role as the Minister representing the Treasurer.

He said the Premier was making “a mockery of his commitment to an ‘open and transparent’ government”.

The Government, while in Opposition in January 2017, promised to answer all questions within 30 days if it won the March 2018 election.

It implemented the new regulation in May — the first parliament sitting month of 2018.

“The questions (Mr Marshall) hasn’t answered to me relate to whether his election commitment of reducing the cost of ministerial offices has been met, the total cost of executive terminations, and whether payments were deliberately made early in the 2017/18 financial year, rather than in 2018/19, to worsen the deficit,” Mr Mullighan said.

“Steven Marshall promised a more open and transparent government and he himself has failed at the first test.”

Speaker Vincent Tarzia has called a parliamentary committee meeting to address the loophole after receiving an official complaint from Labor.

In response to Mr Mullighan’s complaint, Mr Tarzia noted the 30-day rule did not include any guidance on the process to follow, or any sanctions to be incurred, for breaches.

“In order to provide direction on the process to be followed and the appropriate action to taken should the (regulation) be infringed, I have convened a meeting of the Standing Orders Committee to consider this matter amongst other matters,” he wrote.

“It will be the role of the Standing Orders Committee to give due consideration to the concerns raised about the infringement of the sessional order and to provide the House with information for its consideration.”

Mr Marshall defended his Government, saying it was “significantly more open and transparent” than Labor when it was in power.

Premier Steven Marshall has defended the Government.

“There’s laughable, there’s gross hypocrisy then there’s the Australian Labor Party,” he said.

“Labor set the gold standard on delay tactics when it came to questions on notice — having zero commitment to answer any.”

The government says it has taken 583 questions on notice, of which 743 have been answered and all outstanding questions, except one, are within the 30-day time limit.

The 583 questions included those that were placed on the notice paper as well as those that were asked during question time in Parliament.

The Liberal party pledged to introduce a 30-day time limit for answers after figures it compiled while in Opposition in January 2017 showed the-then Labor government had provided answers to only 30 per cent of the 598 parliamentary questions asked of it since it was re-elected in 2014.

The then-Opposition treasury spokesman, Rob Lucas — now Treasurer — condemned the lack of answers provided, saying Labor had “an appalling record of dodging scrutiny and accountability”.

A Labor spokesman at the time said many of the unanswered questions “relate to matters already on the public record”.

Updated figures released by the Liberals in January this year showed the Labor government answered 25 of 91 questions on notice in 2017, a response rate of 27 per cent.

They also showed more than half of the 7246 questions on notice taken since Labor gained power in 2002 had yet to be answered.