Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Order! While I have the attention of the House during this division, I would like to make the following statement. Members may appreciate that at this stage of the parliament the only members who can occupy the chair are the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the Second Deputy Speaker. I have not yet appointed a Speaker’s panel, and the normal roster has not been able to be prepared. Standing order 16 provides for the appointment of a Deputy Speaker and a Second Deputy Speaker to ‘take the chair of the House whenever asked to do so by the Speaker’. Accordingly, when either the Deputy Speaker or the Second Deputy Speaker is rostered to be in the chair, it could be assumed that this was at the request of me as Speaker. In the case of members of the Speaker’s panel, the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker may call on them to take the chair of the House, and so the same assumption about their appearance on a roster for chair duty can be made about members of the panel. I should make it clear to the House that the arrangements for rostering in the chair, including rostering at times when divisions may be expected, are purely a matter for the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the Second Deputy Speaker in consultation with members of the panel. Members may wish to refer to the terms of standing orders 16 and 17 in particular and to the House of Representatives Practice pages 199 to 203.

The result of the division having been announced—

The question now is that the motion, as amended, be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

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