By: Tuífua Vailena

Piveni Piukala stood up in Parliament on 8 September and said something that should worry every taxpayer in Tonga: two of the country’s most important committees have not met since the last parliamentary break.

“The reports that were referred to the standing committees, more importantly the Standing Committees on Legislation and Finance & Public Accounts, could not reach quorum,” Piukala told the House.

The reason is simple. Not enough members turn up. The quorum for each committee is four. Piukala proposed reducing that to three, or even two, to get meetings moving again.

But his concern went further than attendance. Reports need to be scrutinised by committees and acted on in time, he said, not left until the Auditor-General’s report shows that, in his words, “the ship has sunk.” He also called for disciplinary measures against members who skip these meetings.

Other MPs raised further fixes during the same debate: bringing in alternate members, allowing MPs to join by Zoom, and sending some matters straight to the Committee of the Whole House. Acting Speaker Lord Tu’iha’angana had already raised the same concern about quorum failures when Parliament reconvened.

Those are reasonable fixes for a simple problem. But they miss a bigger one.

What this committee actually does

The Finance & Public Accounts Committee is one of the few bodies in Tonga with the job of checking how the Government spends public money.

Under Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, it covers government revenue, ministry spending, annual budget estimates, and reports from the Auditor-General.

Put simply: this is the committee that is supposed to ask hard questions when the Government spends taxpayers’ money.

That makes who sits on it a serious matter.

Parliament raises the question itself

The question of government involvement in parliamentary committees has now been raised from inside Cabinet itself.

During the debate, Minister for Lands Dr Taniela Fusimalohi said the issue had been raised previously and Parliament had been advised to examine how other Commonwealth parliaments operate.

“This issue was raised before. It was recommended that we look at how the parliaments of the Commonwealth operate in this context,” Fusimalohi told the House.

One of the principles identified, he said, was that “parliamentary committees are to be neutral, free from government involvement.”

Fusimalohi drew a distinction between the role of Cabinet and that of Parliament. Cabinet already had its own law committee, he said, and government’s responsibility ended there.

“When issues are brought into Parliament, it is Parliament who deals with it,” he said.

He went further, saying government “should not be involved in these committees to push their own agendas.”

His comments take the debate well beyond MPs missing meetings. They raise a fundamental question about the separation between the executive and the committees meant to scrutinise it.

That question lands hardest on the Finance & Public Accounts Committee.

According to Parliament’s published committee membership, two Cabinet ministers sit on that committee: Minister of Finance Sivoki Lavemaau and Minister for Public Enterprises and Tourism Siaosi Sovaleni.

Lavemaau was appointed Minister of Finance after Semisi Sika lost his parliamentary seat following an unsuccessful appeal against a court ruling over campaign overspending, part of Prime Minister Lord Fakafanua’s push to bring younger members into Cabinet. She had previously served as Assistant CEO at the Ministry of Finance before her elevation to the portfolio. Sovaleni is a former Prime Minister who resigned on 9 December 2024, days before Parliament was due to debate a no-confidence motion against him. Parliament’s website lists him as chair of the Finance & Public Accounts Committee earlier in 2025, before he returned to Cabinet under Fakafanua.

The committee’s job includes examining public revenue, government expenditure, ministry accounts and reports of the Auditor-General.

There is no suggestion that either minister has acted improperly, or that their membership breaches Parliament’s existing rules.

But Fusimalohi’s own words raise the structural question. If parliamentary committees are supposed to be “neutral, free from government involvement,” why does the committee scrutinising government finances include the minister who now runs those finances, and a former committee chair who returned to Cabinet?