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

On indulgence, I have had discussions with the Leader of the House in relation to this matter. The opposition is perfectly relaxed about the government ceding one of its, usually, 10 questions to the crossbenches to be asked. I do make the point that the opposition will be seeking at the end of each question time to ask the 20th question, given that the agreement that we reached with the government and the crossbenches was that there would be 20 questions asked each question time. The Leader of the House’s proposition would mean that if the opposition did not ask the last question we would only have 19 questions being asked. So it is our intention to hold the government to the agreement that we made with them that there would be 20 questions each day. We do welcome the opportunity to ask 10 questions, for the government to ask nine and for the crossbenches to ask one of the government’s number.

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