Report Of The Select Committee On Standing Orders, 1962
criticism and "the query is raised as to whether our forms and procedures could be amended to enable us to devote more time to actual committee work....We might well consider a different apportionment of the time available". 13This theme was agreed upon both by the Deputy Prime Minister the Hon. J.R. Marshall and Members the Hon. H.G.R. Mason and Mr J.G. Edwards. Mr Marshall expressed the hope that the proposed reforms would "enable Members to do more useful work on committees, and perhaps enable Ministers to spend more time on administration".14Mr Mason felt that the time of the House was not well allocated and there needed to be improvements. Mr Edwards hoped that any new rules would allow select committees to sit in the recess as in the United States Congress. He said that this would help bring the process of inquiry more under the jurisdiction of the House as "at the present moment there seems to be a habit of setting up Commissions right, left and centre to inquire into this and that". And it was agreed that a Select Committee on Standing Orders be set up.15
3.4. The Report Appears THE STANDING ORDERS Committee Report was tabled in the House on 12 June The innovations appear.
1962 and debated in the Committee of the Whole House on 12, 13 and 21 June 1962. 16 This Report was notable for its new approaches around three main areas of parliamentary behaviour. First, steps were taken to improve parliamentary accountability in financial management. The Public Accounts Committee, established in 1871, was to be superseded by a new Public Expenditure Committee (PEC). The Standing Orders Committee admitted that the strangely named Public Accounts Committee was in reality an "Estimates" Committee. The Estimates are statements of intended government expenditure in the coming financial year. The "Public Accounts" are the collective statement of government expenditure for the past financial year. Usually, Public Accounts Committees at Westminster and Ottawa consider the consolidated account of government expenditure in the past financial year. One of the Public Accounts Committee's tasks had been to reconcile the actual expenditure with the original statement of policies, which usually accompany the Estimates. But the New Zealand Public Accounts Committee had reported only to the Government of the day. The Public Accounts Committee only talked to the Government!
In practice, the House had never been involved in the passing of these Reports to the long-standing Public Accounts Committee. The committee needed to be replaced by a select committee which could deal more rigorously with financial matters and would, at last, be directly accountable to the House. The Standing Orders report commented: For many years competent observers have expressed the view that the means employed by the New Zealand Parliament for the control of public expenditure are defective and, in particular, that the present Public Accounts Committee with its restricted order of reference is not an effective instrument for the exercise of that control.17
13 NZPD, 14 NZPD, 15 Ibid. 16
29 June 1961, Vol 326, p. 101. 29 June 1961, Vol 326, p. 102.
The Hon. R M Algie, Chairman, Report of the Select Committee on Standing Orders, 1962, I.17. A.J.H.R. pp. 23. Subsequently called the Standing Orders Report. 17 Standing Orders Report, p. 20.
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