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

While Billy McMahon had good days and bad days, generally speaking Billy McMahon was regarded as quite a parliamentary performer in his own fashion. But unfortunately the Prime Minister of today in this chamber would be rated the worst parliamentary performer in living memory—much worse than Billy McMahon; much worse than Bob Hawke; much worse than Malcolm Fraser. I pity the new members of parliament that they have to put up with this dirge, this turgid display, this uninteresting performance he gives every day which goes for far too long and in which he never says anything of any interest at all. And as far as the public are concerned, I have had an extraordinary deluge of emails, letters and correspondence, along with people raising it with me on the street or through Facebook or other methods, about what a joke question time has become in the national parliament. That is sad, because it is a very important part of the day.

Let me give you some statistics. I know that the Labor Party love to talk about facts. Well, these are the facts. In 2008, only 31 per cent of question time was spent answering questions from the opposition and the Independents. The average time that the government takes to answer questions from the opposition is two minutes and 38 seconds. Yet the average time that the government takes to answer questions from their own backbench is five minutes and 10 seconds. This year, the Prime Minister has set new benchmarks—new lows—on performance in the parliament and for boring the parliament to death. He is called ‘the Bradman of boredom’. He takes an average of seven minutes and 16 seconds to answer a question from his own side. He has broken almost all the records, with an answer to one question in the last sitting fortnight which went for 12 minutes and 30 seconds.

It is not just me who thinks this is boring: it is all of my colleagues, most members of the Labor Party and certainly the members of the press gallery, who have started to be turned off from coming to question time. I also pity the members of the public who travel from all over the country to come to question time in what is supposed to be the most senior and important parliament in the country. The public come here and have to put up with the dirge that the Prime Minister tries to pass off as answers to questions.

The government, when they were in opposition, had quite a different view about the need to reform the parliament. I know that the member for Banks was very keen on the need to reform the parliament, but he was not the only one. Former Labor leader Bill Hayden right back in 1978 moved a motion to introduce a time limit for answers in question time of three minutes.

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