Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, but this does relate to the standing orders. How the chair feels I am not too sure and quite frankly, given the situation, I am not really interested. I make this point: substantial changes to the standing orders have always come out of either the appropriate committee, which is the Procedure Committee of this House, or negotiation between the government and opposition. Neither of those has occurred on the two occasions. On the first occasion, when the government came in with new standing orders, there was no consultation with the opposition, and significantly it did not come from the Procedure Committee of the House. Secondly, these new standing orders, which were foisted upon us at 7.30 this morning, did not go through the Procedure Committee; nor was there consultation with us. So the government have set precedents here. They are very sad, regrettable precedents but they are precedents.

We are not opposing these changes to the standing orders because we believe that ultimately they mean an end to farcical Fridays. We are happy to see the end of the most disastrous first term initiative from this government in just three months.

Question agreed to.

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