Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Hopefully, people have read overnight page 188 of House of Representatives Practice, about points of order. We are slowly getting to the point where we are dealing with things at the point in time. If people want disruption, you can have arguments over points of order all you like. Let us get a few things straight. The second part of the honourable member for O’Connor’s point of order was not a point of order and was disruptive. The other question that he raises is something that the House will have to come to grips with, because if you all went away and listened to yourselves today and last year you would have problems.

The question that was asked of the Prime Minister was in order. The answer that the Prime Minister is providing is in order. If the House has problems with the length of the answer, that might be something that the House would like to bring its mind to through the Procedure Committee or other avenues. It is a great risk for me to put this on the record in that you might consider time limits for questions, because I do not believe that is the way we should really go if we are fair dinkum about sitting down and thinking about question time and the way that it should operate.

The other observation I would make is that this early in the life of the government, whatever people believe is by way of ministerial statement or explaining the government’s position, it is all new. It would seem legitimate that, in the early stages, we have questions that ask the position of the government and that it is explained. I believe that later today we might see the proper use of a ministerial statement, where something that may have in the past been announced outside of the chamber will be exposed and introduced inside the chamber. If we take a collective deep breath and work towards improving the way in which this place operates especially at question time, reduce the number of points of order and get on with the proper operation of the House, I will try to assist that.

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