Minor parties are to advocate for the abolition of the job in the upcoming Standing Orders review
The ACT and Green parties have found an unlikely source of agreement: There should be no Leader of the Opposition after the next election.
Every three years, Parliament's Standing Orders are reviewed in a committee headed by the Speaker. In the latest round, the ACT Party has suggested a number of changes including the abolition of the role of Leader of the Opposition.
"Under MMP, the position Leader of the Opposition is obsolete and undemocratic," ACT's deputy leader and whip Brooke Van Velden told the committee in a letter provided to Newsroom.
"The voters who did not vote for the current National Party have their representation removed by the term Leader of the Opposition."
The party's leader, David Seymour, told Newsroom about a recent conversation with a senior public servant organising an event.
"They said they were having the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I said, you know there's actually a whole lot of people - hundreds of thousands of them - who didn't vote for either of those parties. Surely they should be represented too?" he said.
"And the public servant said, 'Well, I just think back to Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition'. I think that quote encapsulates the problem that it's an anachronistic system."
The Green Party is also keen to see the end of the role. Their musterer Jan Logie said the title reflects a by-gone first-past-the-post electoral system.
"Traditionally, Leader of the Opposition refers to the leader of the largest political party that is not in government. However, in a proportional system like ours those parties that do not make up the Government, but are represented in Parliament, are not necessarily a unified opposition voice," she said.
"Therefore, maintaining an official role for a ‘Leader of the Opposition’ is an anachronism in a 21st Century proportional electoral system and the Green Party supports getting rid of it."
Christopher Luxon, the current Leader of the Opposition, said National was worried about more important things but still thought the term should be retained.
"National has much bigger concerns that we’re focused on, like the rising cost of living and skyrocketing mortgages. The Leader of the Opposition is always the leader of the largest opposition party, as is the case for many other countries around the world, and we see no need to change that," he said.
Newsroom has also asked Leader of the House Chris Hipkins for comment and will update this article with any response.
Alongside the abolition of the Leader of the Opposition role, ACT also pushed for changes to hold the government of the day accountable. The most important change, Seymour said, was the idea to apportion select committee membership by how many non-executive members a party has.
This would shift the balance of power on select committees from the government towards the opposition.
"That would dramatically change the dynamics of Parliament. It would change the dynamics within parties because backbenchers would have a more important role," he said.
"I think it would raise the standards of debate. Both committee stages, you would have substantial discussion whereas currently, it's almost shadowboxing - the outcome is predetermined because the Government has the majority."
It would also prevent abuses of power.
Former Speaker Trevor Mallard rebuked the Labour chair of the Health Committee last year when Government backbenchers blocked efforts to question Ashley Bloomfield in the midst of the Delta lockdown. National and the Greens also struggled for months to get the Labour-controlled Finance and Expenditure Committee to summon Treasury and Reserve Bank officials to a briefing on house price modelling.
