Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I refer to the earlier discussion relating to the motion that is currently on the books in Hansard and refer you to House of Representatives Practice, page 588, where it says:

Although only the House itself can exercise control over the content of the Hansard reports, in practice this responsibility has devolved to the Speaker. Rulings of the Chair form the guidelines for what is to be deleted from the debates and what is to be incorporated.

Further down it says:

The Chair has a responsibility to ensure that no objectionable material is included in the debates.

Mr Speaker, I put it to you that you have the power, as Speaker of the House, to order that the Hansard be corrected and that the offensive words be removed from the final form of Hansardthis is not the daily Hansard. There is ample precedent for that. Indeed, there was an occasion where a constituent of mine was inadvertently named in question time and the Speaker subsequently allowed the deletion of the constituent’s name from the permanent record of Hansard. So I would suggest to you that there is ample power contained in there. Now you can rule that those words are objectionable and that they be deleted from the final Hansard record.

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