Kelly Hoare (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The report that we are speaking on today, Maintenance of the standing and sessional orders: first report: debate on the election of Speaker, is the first of the inquiry into the maintenance of the standing and sessional orders. The committee was of the view that there are various issues brought to its attention in relation to standing orders that are relatively minor and which we do not necessarily need to have a full-blown separate inquiry into. That allows the committee to address those concerns and issues and to make recommendations about them. As the chair of the committee has said, this is the first report of what will be an ongoing inquiry.

As other speakers have indicated, there are three recommendations. Two are main recommendations and one is incidental. The first recommendation relates to the debate on the election of the Speaker, which others have spoken about. As the standing orders stood, there was no opportunity for any debate, discussion or speeches in relation to supporting a candidate for Speaker when there was only one candidate. If members would like to have a look at this first report, on pages 2 and 3 they will see that there are two different ways that the Speaker is elected and that the discussion on the election of the Speaker happens in the House of Representatives. The first example given is on the election of the former member for Wakefield as Speaker in 2002. If you look at that example, you will see that it was a very short nomination and acceptance process.

On page 3 of our report, the member for Corangamite and the member for Mallee both had something to say on the nomination and the seconding of the nomination of the Speaker in the parliament on 16 November 2004. The subtitle of this chapter in our report is called ‘Background—the Clerk’s “uncomfortable duty”’. There was an interjection by the Clerk on that day, where he said:

It is my uncomfortable duty to remind the House that it is strictly not in order to speak in favour of the candidates unless the election is contested.

In changing this standing order we have allowed that to happen so that, following an election, the nominee and the seconder of the Speaker in the House of Representatives are not breaking standing orders by supporting their nomination.

Another recommendation is on the presentation of explanatory memorandums. The standing orders as they were allowed for the explanatory memorandum to a bill to be presented at the end of the minister’s second reading speech. However, in November last year, because of various activities in the chamber at that time, the minister’s second reading speech on the workplace relations legislation ended a couple of hours after he began it, so there was a time lag and there was confusion in the Table Office as to whether the explanatory memorandum should have been made public when it was not actually presented to the House of Representatives. The change to this standing order has been made to allow the EM to be presented to the parliament at the same time as the bill is introduced to the parliament and provides for access to that explanatory memorandum. I am pleased to say that both of these recommendations have been accepted and implemented.

As outlined, the ongoing inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Procedure into the maintenance of the standing and sessional orders also includes the review by the committee of those sessional orders which have not yet been made into standing orders. They have been put in place for a specific period to allow the committee and other members of the House to review them and to make recommendations, expand upon them and provide feedback to the committee. I understand that the sessional orders do not become standing orders without the support of members. Later this year the chair will be writing to all members of the House of Representatives reminding members of the changes and these new sessional orders and requesting feedback.

One of the major sessional orders is the one that provides the opportunity that we now have on a Monday afternoon from 4 pm to 6 pm in the Main Committee to discuss delegation and committee reports. We all put a lot of time into committee work. Committee work is very important parliamentary work. Committees, by and large, end up with the unanimous reports, with specific recommendations for the government of the day. The first committee I was on after my election in 1998 was the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. The report of that committee was entitled Unlocking the future. It was a report of the inquiry into the Reeves review of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

For me, as a new member of parliament, it was quite an extraordinary experience. The clerk at the table was the secretary of that committee at that time and would probably agree with me that visiting those places and meeting the people as we travelled across the breadth and width of the Northern Territory in Caribou aeroplanes was an amazing experience. An extended period of time to discuss our reports, our interpretation of them and our experiences of the inquiries that we participate in is a much-welcomed recommendation. It has been implemented now as a sessional order, but we would like to see that feedback. It also provides an opportunity for members who are not members of a committee but may have a specific interest in a particular report of a committee. One that springs to mind is Every picture tells a story, where there is not the opportunity for all members to participate in the inquiry but we all have a personal and professional interest in the areas in which the recommendations were made. I know I made a contribution to that. There were also another two that I would have liked to make contributions to, but I was not a member of those committees. One was the Boys: getting it right report on the inquiry into the education of boys and the other was Working for Australia’s future: increasing participation in the workforce, which was from the Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations and Workforce Participation.

So it is a welcome result. I would encourage all members to make use of the time available to them. We now have these extra two hours every sitting Monday. It gives us the opportunity to speak on a report at its currency, not weeks or months down the track. It also gives us the opportunity to put that in the context of our own electorates and communities. As I said, the chair will be writing to all members to seek feedback on some of these changes. In conclusion, can I place on the record my thanks to the chair and the deputy chair for the way that these inquiries are conducted and to my fellow committee members. I also thank the secretariat, in particular Judy Middlebrook; thanks for all your assistance and support. I look forward to participating in more discussions in the Main Committee between 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock on a Monday evening.

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