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

Theoretically, if that were to happen—which is highly unlikely and has not happened on very many occasions—the only option available to the Deputy Speaker is to suspend the proceedings of the Main Committee and report the disorderly conduct to the House of Representatives. This particular instance usually results in the member being named in the House of Representatives and therefore being suspended from duty in the House of Representatives. The sessional order that has been in place for most of this year allows for the Deputy Speaker in the Main Committee to suspend a member who may be being disorderly—hypothetically—for 15 minutes without disrupting the proceedings of the Main Committee and so allowing the debate to proceed. This report recommends that that sessional order now becomes a standing order.

The fourth issue I would like to deal with is members’ three-minute statements in the Main Committee. Three-minute statements, as members know, occur in the Main Committee between 9.30 and 10 am on Wednesdays and Thursdays when parliament is sitting. If there were going to be some disruption to the House of Representatives, that is the time it would usually happen. That means that members’ three-minute statements could be interrupted but are still concluded at 10 am, which means that people who have their names on a list to speak about important issues in their electorates are denied that opportunity. The sessional order that is in place allows for the continuation of members’ statements for a period of half an hour, notwithstanding the fact that that may be interrupted. But the full time allotted is still half an hour. This report recommends that sessional order 193 relating to members’ three-minute statements be made a standing order.

Finally, I will refer to the speaking times for dissent motions. At the moment there is no time limit for dissent motions. The mover has 20 minutes and other members have 15 minutes until closure. This sessional order allows for 10 minutes for the mover and the second speaker, five minutes for other speakers and a time limit of half an hour. The committee looked at closure motions because of the serious nature of dissent motions; however, we have agreed not to recommend at this stage exempting dissent motions from closure motions. The committee does propose to keep the matter under review and will revisit it at another time. Another main recommendation of this report was the anticipation rule. (Time expired)

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