Australian MPs have come out as the most disorderly in a study comparing “Question Time” between four parliaments.
As part of the research he also looked at other parliaments which permit the prime minister to be questioned directly by backbench MPs, from their own and opposing parties: those of Australia, Canada, and Ireland.
PMQs were instituted in the UK Parliament in 1961, and the airing of selected clips on television and radio has given the public the impression that proceedings are rowdy, combative, and often disorderly.
But on every objective measure, Professor Crowley employed, the UK did not rank as the worst.
For example, the study examined incidents that require the Speaker to intervene: to call for order, challenge the nature of questions, or expel members.
Of the four parliaments studied, Australia was by far the worst, with an average of 12.8 interventions by the Speaker in every question session—including ordering 39 people to leave the Chamber, one of the harshest penalties short of a referral to the Privileges Committee.
The other three parliaments totalled zero expulsions.
Overall, Ireland came a distant second with 3.2 interventions per session, and the UK third with 2.5.
The research also examined the nature of the questions asked—whether they could be characterised as genuinely seeking answers, framed as a criticism of government policy, or as ad hominem attacks on the prime minister or other ministers.
On this measure, Australia and the UK both lagged behind Canada, where close to 80 percent of questions were ranked as being designed to create conflict.
In Australia and Britain the figure was a mere 40 percent.
“Ah, you may say, but I bet in those countries parliamentarians focused their attacks on policy rather than the trivia that dominates PMQs,” Professor Crowley said. “I bring bad news. In all four cases, the vast majority of conflictual questions focused on personalities and parties, not policy.”
However, while it’s widely assumed that watching MPs behaving badly causes people to disengage from politics, the professor cites other research, in which people were shown clips from PMQs to test their reactions.
It found that, while they didn’t like what they saw, it did not reduce their satisfaction with politics, and could boost “internal efficacy” (their level of confidence in their political comprehension).
“There is even research showing that parliaments with these sorts of adversarial exchanges have higher levels of engagement than others,” he notes. “Maybe it’s Punch and Judy politics, but people did at least want to watch Punch and Judy—better that than to be dull.”
