Thanks Minister, What an Absolute Dorothy Dixer of a Question!

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IN parliament in Australia during question time backbenchers occasionally ask a sitting government minister from their own party helpful questions, with the familiar opening line “does the minister” (do this or that)... In Australian political parlance this is known as a “Dorothy Dixer”. The questions are planted ones, already known to the recipient beforehand (sometimes even written by the minister in question her or himself). The purpose of this device is normally to permit the minister an opportunity to promote him or herself or the work of the government. These unloaded grenades are also sometimes tossed up as a tactic for the government to attack the opposition’s policies...a free hit if you like.

The Australian parliamentary ploy owes its name to a real person…“Dorothy Dix” was the pen name of US columnist Elizabeth Meriwether Giller, who won fame (and very lucrative remuneration) as a very popular “Agony Aunt” in the first half of the 20th century. Dix reputedly framed some of the questions herself to suit to the prepared answers she published in her column, hence into adaption into Antipodean political usage.

A society of self-praise and positive spinning  In recent years the quality of question time in Australian parliaments, both commonwealth and state, has come under scrutiny. Calls for its abolition have becoming increasingly common…retired public servant Malcolm Mackellar for one didn’t mince words: “the Dorothy Dixer is an absurdity based on a fiction that the government backbencher asking the question was not given the question by the minister who then answers it… This sort of nonsense defeats the whole purpose of question time and brings the parliament into disrepute” (‘The life and (possible) death of Dorothy Dix’, Brett Evans, Inside Story, 2020, www.insidestory.com.au).

Source: South China Morning Post

For two decades Australian opposition leaders and cross-bench independents have put forward proposals to excise this farcical time-wasting feature from the parliamentary body politic. Despite their collective best intentions no one thinks Dorothy Dixers are going anywhere soon…as Amy Remeikis points out, while the bland and usually  ludicrously meaningless questions are of no value, they work as political theatrics, providing the minister with a platform to drone on about the supposed merits of the government’s policies and programs and at the same time hopefully score some political points against the opposition (‘A sludge of grandstanding: does question time finally need some answers?’, Amy Remeikis, The Guardian, 23-May-2021, www.guardian.com.au).