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

This has been a red-letter day for the parliament. The Speaker, from the Labor Party, has been elected at the urging and support of the opposition. It took, I think, two weeks for the Labor Party to support the current Speaker; the opposition supported him from the first moment that the election was over. And the Deputy Speaker has been elected at the nomination of the Labor Party, even though the Deputy Speaker is from our side of the House. So it is a red-letter day.

The former Deputy Speaker, the member for Chisholm, has not been elected by anyone. I pass on my condolences to the member for Chisholm, Anna Burke, who was a very good Deputy Speaker in the previous parliament and seems to have fallen between all the cracks. I pay tribute to the role she played in the 42nd Parliament as the Deputy Speaker. I am sorry for her that her own party saw fit, instead of supporting her for Deputy Speaker, to support a member of the coalition.

We on the coalition side are delighted that in the 43rd Parliament we have ended with both the Deputy Speaker and the Second Deputy Speaker positions, another mark for a red-letter day. In the 43rd Parliament the coalition holds both the deputy speakership and the second deputy speakership and has also maintained the constitutional validity of the standing orders by making sure that a deliberative vote has not been taken away through a contrivance or artifice proposed by the Labor Party. I note the Leader of the House has tabled the Solicitor-General’s opinion and I seek leave to table the shadow Attorney-General’s opinion. I seek leave to table the critique of the Solicitor-General’s opinion as well, which I am sure he will be happy to accept.

See this speech in context