Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, this report seeks to entrench, by amending standing orders, a number of sessional orders that have been adopted by the House. In particular, as previous members have spoken about, the most significant reform is to have reports which were tabled in the House referred to the Main Committee on the same day. I suppose that the Standing Committee on Procedure considered a number of proposals. I must confess to being favourably disposed towards having committee reports introduced into the Main Committee, but I am not trying to quibble. I think it has been a significant reform that reports are tabled in the House on a Monday, with one speaker a side for five minutes. It is a tyranny; nevertheless, it can be followed up by a 10-minute debate in the Main Committee by not only those committee members who did not get to speak in the House but also anyone else who is interested in the debate. I note that the Manager of Opposition Business is here and will be contributing to this debate, and I welcome her contribution.

I must also confess that, when the committee considered the so-called sin-bin rule for the Main Committee, I had reservations. But I am very pleased to note that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and your peers have yet to enforce the sin-bin rule in the Main Committee. This has been successful because this chamber has a unique characteristic that the honourable member for Mackellar was referring to—the capacity, for example, for members to ask a question. It is a much friendlier chamber and a much more intimate chamber than the House of Representatives and I do not think we would want to sacrifice that.

I commend honourable members who have been in here and particularly the good judgement of the deputy chairs given the new power. That they have not had to resort to it has been a good thing, but it is there should members ever need to be reminded of the power of the deputy speakers presiding in the Main Committee.

The other significant thing the honourable member for Charlton referred to is the preservation of adjournments and three-minute statements. Previously, if there was a division and you were unhappy enough to be on your feet or yet to speak in the three-minute statements or adjournment you lost that opportunity. On the Labor side it really was a great source of inconvenience, if I may put it that way, because we schedule well ahead. I understand that the government may have different arrangements, so they may not have been so immediately impacted. As the honourable member for Charlton pointed out, people like to use the Main Committee to talk about their electorates and issues in their electorates in those three-minute statements and the adjournment debates. I hope the Leader of the House will adopt the recommendations in this report in a speedy way.

I also acknowledge that, whenever there are extra sittings of the Main Committee, the Chief Government Whip always agrees to the scheduling of half an hour of three-minute statements. I would like to place on record my appreciation to him for agreeing to do that or initiating that. These additional opportunities are always welcomed by members on both sides of the House and I think that that is working very well. Perhaps later on we will need to try to entrench that in a sessional order or a standing order, but I have no complaints about the current arrangements and in fact quite welcome them.

I also want to make some other brief comments. For example, the Selection Committee was today faced with a request for 90 minutes for tabling of reports in the House, and that included one committee report where the government did not seek any time. Had they sought some time, it would have meant they would have needed 100 minutes.

In addition to the sessional order, what is proposed is a provision for delegation reports so that if a delegation so decides they can present their report to the Speaker and that delegation report will be automatically referred to the Main Committee and debated in the Main Committee. Why would we want to do that? Doing that frees up a bit more private members’ time and allows more private members’ motions. In fact, as the honourable member for Shortland knows, next Monday there will be one motion from the government and one from the opposition, which is a very limited period for honourable members to bring forward issues by way of a motion that are important to them and their constituents. It does not mean that delegation reports cannot be presented in the House as they currently are and referred to the Main Committee.

For example, I suspect that I would be pretty accurate if I suggested that the Speaker, in leading a delegation, would be unhappy to present a report to himself and even more reluctant, for reasons I do not understand—perhaps the Clerk can help us here—to speak in the Main Committee on that report. Therefore, the Speaker, for example, would always have the option of presenting his report to the House, and I am sure that that would suit his convenience. But I urge those who are leaders and deputy leaders of delegations to seriously consider the default option of presenting their reports to the Speaker and utilising more time in the Main Committee. All too often, the leader and deputy leader get five minutes each in the House and then do not take up the option of having the report debated in the Main Committee. If they did it the default way, they would get at least 10 minutes in the Main Committee each, which I think is a much more serious response to a visit and the success otherwise of it and what improvements honourable members should be aware of or need to make. So, as I say, if you were to be a deputy leader of a delegation, I would strongly urge you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to consider the default option. I am sure you will.

There are some tidying up resolutions and recommendations here. I am not going to go through them because they are pretty straightforward. But I would flag one issue and that is the private members’ bills. At the moment, the Procedure Committee deals with the explanatory memorandum. But I think there is a deficiency in this place in that honourable members who present a private member’s bill get only five minutes and there is never a debate or a vote on it unless the government of the day grants precedence. In my time in this place that has occurred with Ron Edwards, the member for Stirling from Western Australia, with an obscure timing bill—if I may describe it that way—that the government of the day accepted, and the member for Menzies with his euthanasia bill. I think that there are good private members’ bills and they should be encouraged to be brought forward. I think that there ought to be a proper debate and that government members ought to have an opportunity to respond properly to them. If people want some sort of brake on voting, maybe they could use the Selection Committee to determine whether or not a vote should proceed on a private member’s bill. But that is for the Procedure Committee to give its due weight and consideration to, and I look forward to that. I certainly support the report of the Procedure Committee.

See this speech in context