Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

If the Manager of Opposition Business is going to be taken seriously, he should tell the truth. In the course of his contribution he made two statements that he knows to be untrue. First of all, he claimed that if this motion of dissent is carried you are out of a job. He knows that that is not true. There have been many motions of dissent. Some have been passed in this House and the speakers against whom they have been passed have not lost their jobs. It is only a motion of want of confidence in the Speaker that has the effect that the Manager of Opposition Business claimed. But a more important untruth is that he claimed in his contribution that more people had been suspended from the House under your speakership than ever before. That is absolutely untrue. It is completely untrue. He knows it is untrue and he should not make that kind of misleading statement before this House. This Manager of Opposition Business has no regard for the truth. He has no regard for parliamentary standards. The motion that he has moved cannot be taken seriously by this House.

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