Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to pay tribute to you and the rest of the Speaker’s panel for the way you have facilitated the business of the Main Committee. Let me give you the history. In fact, we did have a whips meeting and there was no proposal before the whips meeting about the private member’s bill. We concluded that meeting. Then I was approached and told it was an oversight, that they wanted to make a change. So I did. That change was made, and it was agreed that there would be two speakers—one each from each side for 10 minutes. Then there was a further approach—and this is where I think you deserve due credit, being responsible for the Main Committee—that the opposition be allowed to split their speaking time on the second reading debate. Again, we agreed. There were supposed to be two opposition speakers for five minutes each and one government speaker. There was a government speaker for 10 minutes. But the first speaker, the proposer of the bill, was Mr Abbott, who spoke for seven minutes.

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