Photo: VNP/Louis Collins
Parliament's twice-yearly Scrutiny Week is underway, with MPs pausing their debate of legislation to focus on the performance of government entities over the past financial year.
The June Scrutiny Week is prospective, focusing on the Estimates. These are the budget plans for each entity. The December Scrutiny Week is retrospective. Ministers and officials are asked to account for their entities' performances over the past financial year.
One of the first high-profile meetings of the week was the Primary Production Committee's hearing with Andrew Hoggard, supported by officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries. Hoggard answered questions related to his responsibilities for biosecurity, animal welfare and food safety.
A range of questioning styles emerge during Scrutiny Week. Some are tightly aligned with the purpose of annual reviews, focusing on promises, outcomes and whether budgets were adequate or sustainable; others are shaped by a high-profile issue or the combative energy of the MPs and ministers involved. The latter tend to reflect politically contentious topics that have drawn public or media attention.
Monday's hearing with Hoggard began reasonably prescriptively, with the Greens' Steve Abel asking about the effect of MPI job cuts on the mitigation of a number of biosecurity threats.
"Is there a risk that your legacy, minister, will see wilding pines getting worse, Madagascar Ragwort getting worse, and Yellow Legged Hornets taking hold here, because you've actually cut the biosecurity defence net that we need in this country?"
Hoggard was quick to refute Abel, telling the Green MP that "frontline staff and biosecurity had actually gone up. So there's more people focused on the front line than there had previously been. Yes, there were some back-office roles that were disestablished, but there is more of a focus now on the front line".
In preparation for Scrutiny Week, Select Committees identify the key topics they want to elucidate information on. In theory, this keeps the scrutiny on tack and prevents a free-for-all grilling session.
But when hearings move onto political hot topics or issues garnering media attention, the exchanges can take on a more interrogatory tone. Abel was clearly keen on an extended line of questioning on animal welfare, employing a visual aid of a pig in a farrowing crate to ask the Minister about a topic that has landed Hoggard in the news a lot recently.
Photo: VNP/Louis Collins
"Minister, I've got an image taken from a Taranaki farm a few weeks ago. There's one dead piglet there underneath... Would you agree this is not legal under our Animal Welfare Act, to have mother pigs in cages like that, based on the 2020 High Court finding?"
This question from Abel kicked off an extensive back and forth. Hoggard replied:
"Well, no, the 2020 High Court finding said that how the rule was put in place was done incorrectly... and obviously that pigs being in a farrowing crate for 33 days did not meet the purposes of the Act. So, not the crate itself. And so that's what we're looking at-how do we minimize that time in the crate to only what's necessary to save as many piglets as possible."
Abel: "So why do you reject the advice of your National Animal Welfare Advisory Council (NAWAC) that said the best welfare outcomes for mother pigs and piglets is moving away from farrowing crates?"
Hoggard: "Well, no, I don't think they said that. No, I mean, the analysis I had was, I mean, they could only look at the sows in terms of that. The advice I've got is, like I've said, 40 percent higher risk of mortality. We've got to make sure that it's not just the sow, it's the piglets as well. You've got to balance everything up. It's not a perfect world in terms of farming."
Hoggard went on to say that the costs associated with moving away from farrowing crates would be difficult for pig farmers.
"Business is going to be less profitable by that amount every year. That was the key thing around [profitability], actually, that's what adds on the extra cost to that NAWAC proposal."
This prompted Abel to ask whether the Minister for Animal Welfare had prioritised profit for pig farmers over animal welfare.
Photo: VNP/Louis Collins
"In terms of the economics, that was the basis for the transition period," Hoggard replied.
"In terms of the welfare, that was why we went to minimise the length of time they could spend in the crate, and that would give us the best piglet survivability. So the welfare of both sow and piglet."
Although most of the soundbytes of scrutiny week will feature opposition MPs and ministers or officials, all committee MPs are involved in scrutiny, meaning that like Question Time, scrutiny isn't just a tit for tat across the room. MPs from the government parties also have a chance to ask questions, and like in Question Time, these often manifest as patsy questions.
In the midst of Abel and Hoggard's exchange, National's Suze Redmayne decided to jump into the ring with her largely rhetorical but still answered question around farmers' attitudes towards animal welfare.
"Do you think that essentially farmers, including all farmers, are intrinsically aware of the health of their animals, and that's vitally important to them?" Redmayne said to the Minister.
Hoggard didn't waste any time in seizing upon the alley-oop his government colleague had given him.
"If the animal isn't healthy, they don't produce. I mean, I've known that for a long time on a dairy farm. A cow has to be healthy to make milk."
Hoggard's ACT party colleague Mark Cameron followed Redmayne's example and teed another easy hit up for the Minister, in the form of an esoteric question about piglets gravitating towards heat sources in free farrowing systems and the mortality rates related to this.
Like in Question Time, these kinds of exchanges can easily digress into political tit-for-tat, with the discussion wandering away from the intended narrow scope of annual reviews. Deputy Chair Miles Anderson felt compelled to rein things back in.
"Righto. So we're getting way off track, because we should be looking at the 2024/25 financial year," the National MP told his colleagues.
By Friday afternoon, MPs and ministers will have sat through many hours of questioning. The efficacy of these sessions, in achieving transparency and accountability, will vary widely and depend on the quality of both the questions and the answers.
You can watch the scrutiny hearings and find the full schedule on Parliament's website.
To hear the audio version of this story click the link near the top of the page.
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