Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I have two questions for you. The first goes to your ruling in question time today in relation to a denial of the call I was seeking. I ask you whether under standing order 86 there is an obligation on the Speaker to acknowledge a member or whether that is a discretionary call. I would ask you to respond to that. Secondly, I would ask you to review the tapes of question time today. A consistent point of order that we have taken has been the delay in your asking the Prime Minister to resume his seat when a member of the opposition has risen to make a point of order. Clearly, it facilitates a completion of the answer by the Prime Minister and delays a call being sought by a member of the opposition, and I would ask you to review the tapes to see whether or not that is a practice which is occurring. I am sure it is not a conscious practice, but nonetheless it is one that has been noted on a number of occasions. I wonder whether, once you have reviewed those tapes, you could report back to the parliament.

See this speech in context