Quiet obedience can never serve Labor MPs well

There are very few occasions on which the executive is placed under the microscope and subjected to the full scrutiny of parliament. Question time is one of them. Any member can rise and ask a question of any minister, from the Prime Minister down.

Well, that used to be the practice.

On March 20, Kevin Rudd, Robert McClelland, Rudd, Julia Gillard, Gillard, Gillard, McClelland, Joel Fitzgibbon and Stephen Smith asked questions.

Either I had double vision or someone had pushed the replay button. All of the above are on the Opposition front bench. Not a backbencher in sight. Labor's leadership had arrogated question time to itself.

Worse, no one seemed to care. Not the Labor Party, not the media and certainly not the general public.

I raised the matter in a column almost four years ago after the following discussion with a Labor backbencher, who I suggested should ask a question on a current issue.

"They won't let me."

"Who won't let you?"

"The tactics committee."

I listened, mouth agape, as he told me that each sitting morning, the tactics committee met to decide the questions that would be asked and who would ask them.

The tactics committee, I learned, was made up of the same bright sparks who had guided Labor to its electoral triumphs of 1996, 1998 and 2001. They repeated the dose in 2004.

After regaining my composure I explained to him that he was a member of parliament and he had a right - nay, a duty - to ask any question he wished.

No one could take away that right from him.

I might as well have been speaking Swahili. Clearly, I was not getting through to him.

"Try to imagine for one moment Winston Churchill's reaction if told that he could only ask a question in the House of Commons after it had been vetted by a tactics committee.

"Then consider the likely reactions in our parliament of Arthur Calwell, Eddie Ward, Jim Killen, Billy Wentworth, Jim Cairns, Bert Kelly and Gough Whitlam.

"See what I mean?"

How had it come to this?

Probably through a mixture of ignorance and arrogance, for when I raise the matter with incumbents the look of disbelief is wondrous to behold. Backbencher rights? It is beyond their comprehension. Most weren't aware of what they had lost.

Most of the 162 questions asked by backbenchers in the current parliament were drafted by the tactics committee and handed out to backbenchers. Unbelievable.

The practice became entrenched when Labor returned to Opposition in 1996. A massive loss of seats and 13 years in government ensured only a handful of Labor MPs remembered what question time was like in Opposition.

All wisdom, the executive decided, resided with the front bench. It didn't occur to them that denying backbenchers the right to cross-examine ministers was not only outrageous but politically stupid.

When I suggested to my friend that he buck the system and jump up and ask a question, he paled visibly.

I understood why. He would be disciplined, have his preselection threatened and lose any chance of promotion.

A party dominated by factional warlords, union bosses and machine apparatchiks has crushed the spirit of those with any independence.

No one questions these autocrats. Not if they want to survive.

However, this is not just about independence or egos. It's bad politics. Backbenchers have lost interest in question time, and that stops them from doing investigative work.

Let me quote from the column I wrote four years ago: "Shortly after the 1971 budget, the first lady and I were dining with a Woy Woy dentist who told us of his outrage when he had learned that oil companies had gambled against an increase in fuel excise in the budget by paying five times their normal amount of excise on fuel held in bond at Kurnell the week before the budget.

"When the treasurer increased the fuel excise by 2c a gallon, they made millions. Had excise remained unchanged, they would not have lost a cent. 'How do you know that?' I asked. His response: 'My brother works at the bond store.’”

The next day, I asked the then minister for customs and excise, Don Chipp, a question. His mouth opened and closed a number of times before he had to admit he didn't know.

Later that day he admitted I was right and that liquor and cigarette companies had also made millions with the same dodgy practice. The headlines the next day ensured the practice ceased.

My experience was far from unique.

There will be those who ask: who cares? Well, for a start, those who care about parliamentary democracy and who resent the erosion of the right of ordinary MPs to speak out on behalf of their constituents.

The leader and his front bench should have the pre-eminent role at question time, but not a completely dominant one.

Can anything be done about it? Of course it can. The new Leader of the Opposition did not start this odious practice, but he can stop it. And he will if he cares about the institution of parliament.

He has made the most impressive start of any leader of the Opposition in memory. He has the authority. He should use it.

If not it will be up to the back bench. But to coin a phrase, do they have the ticker?