Leader of the House: Juggling a jigsaw puzzle

National Party MP Louise Upston has quite a few full-time jobs. She is MP for Taupo - her "first and most important job", in the parliamentary context.

She is also Minister of Social Development and Employment, Minister for Tourism and Hospitality, for Disability Issues, for Child Poverty Reduction, and for the Community and Voluntary Sector. All big jobs. Recently she has added yet another huge role, a role at the core of parliament - Leader of the House.

Leader of the House (LOTH) is a cabinet position typically given to senior MPs. Recent holders have been Gerry Brownlee, Simon Bridges, Chris Hipkins, Grant Robertson, Chris Bishop and now, Louise Upston.

As the new arrival in a storied list with a huge amount of influence on the functioning of Parliament, we sat down with Louise Upston to get her take on the role of Leader of the House. All quotes are from Upston herself.

The legislative jigsaw puzzler

"The overall job is making sure that the Government's legislative program, the laws we want to pass, are progressed through the parliamentary term," Upston said. "So that is the overall job. So that takes quite a lot of planning and scheduling. I've described it in the last couple of weeks as a jigsaw puzzle where you're trying to fit all the pieces of the jigsaw into the plan, except you've got twice as many parts of the puzzle as there is room."

I suggest this may be why the House sits a lot more often that it used to.

"I think people would be shocked to realise, in a normal week there is only 13 hours available to progress legislation, [once] you take out Question Time, take out the General Debate, which are functions of the normal week. Also, in a House sitting block, you'll have a Members' Day. So that is even fewer hours available for government legislation. And that's why we have been sitting extra hours."

"There's a myth about urgency that I think is really important to put on the record. Much of the urgency that we use, is just to get overtime, to get extra hours, and that is to progress the legislation that the Government and the parties in the coalition campaigned on in the election that we won."

The LOTH is the Government's master of everything that happens in the debating chamber, overarching the work of the whips, ministers and backbench MPs.

This is all the LOTHs' purview "because, basically what happens in the House either enables or prevents us getting through our legislative program."

That includes such details as how long governing-party backbenchers can speak on bills, which this term has often been barely any time at all.

Parliament's agenda & schedule

Part of the business of House management is the Order Paper, the order in which business is considered and bills are debated.

"Again, that is challenging. So you want to have sufficient legislation on the Order Paper, reflecting the likelihood of when things will come up. But again, like I was describing in terms of that puzzle; all of a sudden something happens and you've got to have something that goes to the top of the tree. Or something might be in select committee. You're expecting it to come back at a certain date, but they've hit something gnarly and so the select committee chair requests from the Business Committee an extension to the report-back [deadline]."

Select Committee extensions are quite common and can disrupt a carefully laid plan.

"So all of a sudden, your pipeline for what you were going to put into the House on a particular date is different. So you've got to have enough legislation on the order paper to have that flexibility."

Planning ahead for a return to power

"One of the things that I'm thinking about at the moment is 'how do I ensure the pipeline of [future] legislation is ready to go so that you don't have a situation at the end of a term of Parliament when there's insufficient on the Order Paper [for the next term]?'"

"We have to have first readings to get [bills] into select committee, to start the submission process and have the submissions back in, so that when the next Parliament starts, there's work for the select committees to progress and that will then come back into the House."

"So I'm not just thinking about the next two months. I'm thinking about the next six, eight, nine months, to ensure that there's a pipeline of legislation. And I can promise you, there are no shortage of options. It is just which order those bills are in that list."

Cross-party diplomacy: In the Chamber

In Parliament, political foes can be more cooperative than you might expect, including in the debating chamber.

"Often there's a lot of kind of behind the scenes work in terms of working across the House," Upston said. "You know, where there is legislation that is agreed by all parties or agreed by the major opposition and the government members. You'd like to see that there's a bit more progress with those that kind of makes sense."

A common scene in the debating chamber is quiet conversations occurring between MPs from parties that are political foes. Political foes can be surprisingly chummy, but these chats are often backchannel parleys featuring party whips, the Leader or Shadow Leader of the House. They need to make sure the correct MPs are rostered in the chamber at the correct time - maybe to debate a specialist topic. That planning is helped by everyone agreeing how long everything is likely to take. A cooperative agreement that some current debate will reliably finish by the dinner break can be helpful to everyone planning what happens next.

"Having spent three years as a whip is a really helpful role for the Leader of the House. When you're in Opposition, you understand the Government wants to get through certain legislation, and there are just logistics that make life easier, and the Whip's job is to manage their teams, manage their MPs. So you don't really want to cause chaos if you can do things in an orderly manner by working across the chamber. That's what you do."

Cross-party diplomacy: Business Committee

Cooperation is also common in select committees and other MPs groups, including the Business Committee, which specifically exists to organise and pre-agree what happens in the chamber. The Leader of the House is key to its function.

"The Speaker chairs the Business Committee, and it operates on what we call 'near unanimity', which is, you know, pretty much nearly everybody has to agree."

I suggest to Upston that, in practice, a minor party or two might safely be ignored under 'near unanimity', but she disagrees.

"In this Parliament where the numbers of each party are higher-so if you had a party that had one MP or two MPs out of the 120, that's not a big number. But when you start getting a party that's 8 percent, 10 percent, 12 percent, it is much more challenging to then have a Business Committee decision that excludes a larger minority party."

So how is agreement achieved? Are tit-for-tat deals made?

"I don't like the term deal, because that kind of implies games. I think it's just getting to points of agreement. So I tend to not put things on the agenda if [they aren't ] likely to get agreement. So, why provoke an argument, why provoke unnecessarily?"

"So, for example, you might have a minister that is seeking bills to be combined. I expect the minister to talk to the Opposition parties and to sound them out and convince them that it's a good idea. If they can't convince them, it's not going on the Business Committee agenda because we'll get, it'll, you know, be defeated, and I just don't think that that is useful in terms of the way the Business Committee operates."

Upston gives a softer example of decision sharing.

"There are special debates that are now part of the functioning of the House. We might then have, you know, four options for two debate [spots]. And we might then say, okay, well, which one is your priority, which one is our priority, and reach agreement that way."

A lot of the discussion occurs outside the Business Committee meeting. There are a lot of informal bilaterals (to borrow diplomatic parlance).

"Yes, so there was a procedural issue that was happening in the House recently, that I would then ring my counterpart, [Labour MP and Shadow leader of the House Kieran McAnulty], and say, 'this is what's coming. This is why. I don't want you to be surprised. It's important that you know what's happening. There's nothing mysterious in this. You know, we're not playing games. I'm ringing you to give you a heads up'. And I think that's where in terms of the functioning of the House. It is really important to do that as much as possible."

Cross-party diplomacy: Inside the coalition

The same occurs within a coalition. History shows that Leaders of the House overseeing a coalition have to expend time and energy (in quantities dependent on the personalities involved), making sure their own coalition partners remain on board with 'the plan'. Legislative timetables can shift if a coalition party gets last-minute jitters about a bill.

I ask Upston if she does intra-coalition diplomacy as well.

"Absolutely. So, as we look at the runway to the end of this Parliament, the amount of time available isn't great."

Upston's eyes widen slightly at this point, like she has a mental image of an oncoming train.

"So we have to do a bit of prioritisation. So, of course, that is with all three parties in the coalition, saying, 'right, what are the ones that I must do on your list, what are the ones that are less important?' We're going through that process at the moment."

Parliament's rules: Advocate, counsel and jury

The Leader of the House also tends to feature highly as an advocate wherever Parliament's rules are decided, ruled on or judged against and are typically on the Standing Orders Committee, which suggests changes to Parliament's rules. Likewise, they sit on the Privileges Committee, which is the disciplinary committee that recommends punishments for serious breaches of Parliament's most sacrosanct rules.

They are also the predominant advocate for their own party and government, in arguments inside the House about the interpretation of the rules.

"So the whips have a responsibility within the team, for what we're doing and how we're behaving, but the Leader of the House and the Shadow Leader of the House [are] then - 'how is the House performing?'

"During Question Time is often when it happens - the speaker may make a decision, or there might be a member or minister that's behaving in a way that you don't think is within the rules, and so you'll take a Point of Order to challenge it.

"I think one of the things [you notice], having been in Parliament for a few years now, is each Speaker is different, and their tolerance for challenge is different.

"I'm not the sort of person who sees [Points of Order] as a good delaying tactic. But where it is important to get the House back on track - absolutely. It's something that has to be done."

Cabinet Legislation Committee

Before all of the scheduling of debates and getting legislation agreed, it first has to be suggested by ministers, agreed in principle by cabinet, developed by ministries, written by the Parliamentary Counsel Office and agreed by Cabinet. That whole process is overseen by the Cabinet Legislation Subcommittee chaired by the LOTH. They make sure the legislation developed and written is what Cabinet asked for. I asked Upston how that works.

"Yes, earlier in the legislative process, there's a Cabinet Paper with policy decisions, and it is really important that the bill that we introduce matches the policy intent that we have agreed. So in many cases, legislation that comes to that committee is just a kind of pass-through. But on the odd occasion, it gets paused there. It needs to go back for more detailed work.

"And sometimes there's just expectation management. A practice that I have introduced is-I don't like Cabinet Papers with 'dates of introduction', 'dates of report back', commitments of when it will be passed and enacted. Because it's too much expectation - and that's my job. That's my job to manage all of the moving parts.

"So [instead], bills have a priority. And so that can be included in the Cabinet Paper because that indicates: is it likely to be passed before the election? Is it likely to be introduced before the election?

"But at the end of the day, it's about managing expectations. And I don't want to be in a position where an agency is working to a timeline that is actually not going to happen in reality."

I ask whether bills can turn up at the committee that have turned out to be much more difficult to draft than expected, that have more moving parts than imagined.

"Yes, and in most cases, that's picked up earlier when it's gone to a cabinet [subject sub-committee]. Usually there's comments at that stage. If it gets to the 'lege [legislation] committee and the drafting has been incredibly complex-my preference is that we don't introduce bills that we know have substantive issues still to resolve. Sometimes you have to in the interests of efficiency. But I think one of the lessons is to go slow at the start, do the policy work, do the drafting, get it right so that when it goes to select committee; yes, there is room for improvement, but you're not dealing with fundamental policy issues at the select committee, because that then creates a whole bunch of other quality challenges and potential for delay."

I suggest to Upston that bills with remaining, unresolved issues might also create more opportunities for opposition politics.

"Oh, absolutely. So it is way better to do the policy work at the start, get the bill as near right as possible when it's introduced, and then the select committee process should be polishing, rather than doing fundamental changes."

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