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

Madam Speaker, if standing order 99 is to mean anything at all, this question has to be in order. I will just take you through it briefly. Standing order 99 allows questions without notice to any member relating to the business of a committee for which the member asked is responsible. I would point out: the member for Holt is the chair of the relevant committee. A question to a committee chair asking when a report will be tabled has been permitted. But that is not the case on this occasion. A question asking if a committee had been requested to inquire into a certain matter has not been permitted. That is not the case on this occasion. The Speaker has ruled out of order a question to a chair which asks that the committee examine certain matters. We are not asking that on this occasion. Questions concerning statements by a committee chair are not permitted. We are not asking about the statements that the member for Holt made in the tabling of his report; we are asking him if he still believes, in the light of his committee's report, which he was responsible for, that our security agencies' capacity to perform their tasks—

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