I hope that applies to me too, Koos! Hon Speaker, Parliament needs to play a leading role in driving progressive change in our society. It needs to do this in a number of ways, including influencing the national political discourse through the debates we have in this House, holding government accountable through proper oversight work, passing progressive legislation and, finally, embodying the change we would like to see in our society at large. Unfortunately, however, I feel that in each of these respects we are falling short of our ideals.
Firstly, the format for debates in this House is not conducive to robust engagement on the most topical issues affecting our nation. The only debates we seem to have are on our national days or Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU, topics that do not always capture the pulse of the times. This is something that we urgently need to apply our minds to, so that this can be a proper debating forum that remains relevant to the burning issues outside.
In respect of oversight, our parliamentary committees need to play a greater role in holding government departments to account. To do this effectively, however, documents cannot be presented to members on the day, as is happening all too often. With regard to legislation, it is completely ludicrous that all of our parliamentary mechanisms are geared to preventing the legislative proposals Members of Parliament from being tabled in the House. We are legislators, and the system should therefore be encouraging us to push progressive legislative initiatives.
It is, however, on the issue of embodying the change that we would like to see where our Parliament falls short. We should be the most transparent institution in respect of how the people's money is spent, yet we are prevented from seeing documents pertaining to issues like travel claims. There are also too many inefficiencies in our systems, such as waiting till the last minute to approve overseas trips, thereby substantially increasing the cost of airline tickets. It is also absurd that we can put public questions to any Minister, and even the President, but yet there is no mechanism for putting public questions to the Speaker as to how this institution is run. This is a lacuna that we must address.
Finally, Parliament needs to embody the change that we are fighting for at the Congress of the Parties, COP 17, in Durban. I am proud to be a member of the Parliamentary Steering Committee on Climate Change, tasked with greening Parliament, but I am not proud of what I saw on my self-guided tour two weeks ago.
We currently do not have a waste management policy to speak of, and there is energy wastage throughout this precinct. Most shockingly, I discovered that Parliament spends over half a million rand on bottled water a year. Given that it takes eight litres of water to make one litre of bottled water, we should be ashamed to put a parliamentary logo on these bottles.
I am, however, committed to changing all these things before COP 17 and I trust that we can make this a project that we can all get behind as custodians of this institution. Thank you. [Applause.]