The House: Budget Q&A with Clerk Assistant James Picker

There is a lot to take in on Budget day-fiscal buzzwords, opposition reactions, commentary from media pundits, and of course the onslaught of numbers - it can be easy to get overwhelmed with it all.

To break the process down, and get some insight into what actually happens in Parliament on Budget day, The House chatted with one of Parliament's top clerks, Clerk Assistant James Picker, who has been a Clerk at the Table during multiple budgets over the 15 years he's been with the Office of the Clerk.

What should people expect to see in the House?

"The run-up to the Budget started at the back end of last year with the government publishing something called the Budget Policy Statement, which all governments do. It sets out its priorities and what it is going to be focusing on in the upcoming Budget.

"I think the thing that possibly should stand out for most New Zealanders is that this is a process that's taken quite a long time to get to. It's not just - you get to the day and the Minister of Finance stands up and sort of says, look, this is what the government's going to be doing next financial year."

How does Budget Day actually start?

"The House will actually start without oral questions, so the day itself sort of looks and feels a little bit different if you're watching it all on the television. We start with something called Supplementary Estimates, which is actually about the year we're in. They're changes to the Budget that was presented last year. It might be things that they didn't foresee, and things that came up. That's not unusual, it happens every year with every government. So you actually start with the year that you're in and then move on to talking about the year upcoming."

What's with the big stack of books?

"The Minister of Finance comes in with a whole stack of books, because the Budget itself isn't actually the Appropriations Bill that is the vehicle that goes through the House for the passage of the Budget and for members to vote on. The really detailed information is in what's called the Estimates documents, and there are quite a number of those. They're often broken down into sort of nine or ten sectors, covering things like justice and health and a variety of subjects.

Then there are a lot of documents that are providing information to the House. There might be a document about wellbeing, there might be a document about child poverty - documents that are supplied to the House to really explain what's in the Budget in quite granular detail."

So when the opposition gets up and makes its responses, do they have those numbers in advance?

"No, they don't - the Budget itself is embargoed until two o'clock and actually a slightly strange process that we have on Budget day itself is the Clerk of the House will stand up a number of different times and read things out for the chamber, but on … the benches at either side of the Speaker a staff member from the Office of the Clerk sits … with a pile of documents on their knees, trying very hard not to drop them. As things are introduced to the House by the Minister of Finance, they will be putting them on the Table of the House, making them available, because up to that point, a lot of the Budget stuff is covered by budget secrecy."

Why is it all so secret?

"Well, it's by convention that the Budget is presented to the House first, [though] governments do make announcements in the media in the run-up to the Budget.

"Hard copies are delivered to Parliament at 7am - which are a full set of Budget documents for every MP and for a number of different people, including the Clerk of the House - all packaged up with everybody's name on it, ready to go.

"We then lock them in a room down in the basement of Parliament House until 2pm and the wonderful messengers from around the precinct distribute them out to the members who, at that moment, are in the chamber. So when they go back to the office after the proceedings in the House, there'll be a packet of Budget documents on their desk for them to break into and start going over. What you'll see on the opposition benches as the Minister of Finance is delivering the Budget speech, is members on laptops looking at the Treasury website for the documents that have been released at 2pm."

What happens after Budget Day?

"One of the core functions of Parliament is to scrutinise how the government plans to gather revenue and spend the taxes that it collects from New Zealanders every year - what are its priorities and what is it going to be spending that money on?

"It doesn't just finish with Budget Day. In the weeks and months ahead, the select committees will do their scrutiny, and will report to the House on the scrutiny that they've done, the hearings that they've had with their ministers."

"Then we get into the Committee of the Whole House stage, where ministers will be back in the chamber again, answering questions from all members on the Budget.

"All the way through the process, you'll see that every time we get to debating the Budget in the chamber, the Clerk of the House will announce to the chamber that there's an amendment to the Budget motion, which is often a no-confidence motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition. So, on the afternoon of Budget Day you may see it. That will be up to the Leader of the Opposition, but it is traditionally something that they do, to move a no-confidence motion in the government. So not only are they debating the Budget itself, but a potential no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition."

Soon after Budget Day, select committees will release information on the Parliament website about Scrutiny Week, including which ministers they will be hearing from, on what days, and what subjects.

You can listen to the audio from The House's chat with James Picker by clicking the link near the top of the page.

*RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.