Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I have a question to you. Mr Speaker, in question time today you made a ruling with respect to offensive remarks and their withdrawal. In that ruling you appeared to rely on the rulings made by Speaker Snedden in 1980 and then 1981 regarding a remark about a group of people versus a remark about an individual. I think, with great respect, that the application of Speaker Snedden’s ruling was incorrectly made and I direct you to page 502 of House of Representatives Practice, in which he actually says:

In the past there has been a ruling that it was not unparliamentary to make an accusation against a group as distinct from an individual. That is not a ruling which I will continue. I think that if an accusation is made against members of the House which, if made against any one of them, would be unparliamentary and offensive, it is in the interests of the comity of this House that it should not be made against all as it could not be made against one.

That being the case, I would ask you to revisit that ruling and perhaps report back to the House, because Speaker Snedden specifically said that an offensive remark against the whole—

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