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

by leave—I am pleased to be able to speak to this report of the Standing Committee on Procedure. It is the second report by the committee as part of its ongoing reference into the maintenance of the standing and sessional orders. The report covers quite a number of issues, as the chair, the member for McPherson, has indicated. I would like to focus on two of these today: the presentation of committee reports and the setting of time limits for dissent motions.

As the chair indicated in her contribution, this year saw the introduction of new arrangements for debating committee and delegation reports once they had been presented in the House on a Monday. The Procedure Committee’s November 2005 report, Procedure relating to House committees, responded to the complaints of members about the limited time in the House and Main Committee for the presentation of and debate on committee reports. Generally only the chair and deputy chair had the opportunity to speak when a report was tabled in the House, and then for only five minutes each. When a report was referred to the Main Committee for further debate there was often a significant time lag. Given the amount of time and effort that members put into their committee work, it was disappointing that so little opportunity for debate on the report was possible. The Procedure Committee therefore proposed a number of sessional orders to allow for referral of committee reports to the Main Committee on the day they were presented in the House. Anyone wishing to speak to the report could each have 10 minutes speaking time. Those sessional orders were adopted by the House on 9 February 2006 and have now been evaluated by the committee.

As the chair indicated, the response has been encouraging, with 38 members speaking in the Main Committee on Monday afternoons on committee and delegation reports. Not all reports have been referred to the Main Committee in this way—it is a matter of judgement for each committee to decide whether the nature of the report merits such a referral. However, the changes have increased the number of people able to debate a report and that is a positive development.

I note that, in the submission from the Clerk on this matter, he had noted some signs among members of lack of familiarity with arrangements. Detailed instructions have been issued to committee secretaries advising them of the new arrangements. However, when all is said and done, it is up to members to support these arrangements, put their names on speakers lists and encourage the referral of their committee reports to the Main Committee.

I would now like to turn to another sessional order that has been trialled this year, providing for specific time limits for debates on dissent motions. The mover and next member speaking each were allocated 10 minutes, and any other members five minutes, with a total limit on the debate of 30 minutes. As the report notes, prior to adopting this sessional order there was no provision for termination of a dissent debate, other than there being no more speakers or the moving of a closure motion, and the use of closure motions was very common.

There have been two dissent motions moved since the sessional order was adopted. In the first instance, three closure motions were moved. In the second instance, some debate was possible before a closure motion on the question was moved.

The committee would like to see members have an opportunity to set out the arguments in support of and against the particular ruling under dispute, without premature curtailment through the use of closure motions. The committee did consider whether dissent motions should be exempt from closure motions, but was not in favour of this at present. The committee has recommended that the time limits for dissent motions be made permanent standing orders, and will continue to monitor their operation.

I would like to thank the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the member for McPherson, for her hard work and cooperative approach to running the committee, and my colleagues on the committee for their hard work. This report covers a wide range of matters, there is unanimous support for its recommendations among committee members and I commend the report to the House.

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