Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I appreciate your statement to the House about the inadvertent error made earlier in the day. I also appreciate that the Manager of Opposition in the House is allowed to have his moment in the sun, gloating about an inadvertent error. I make the point that there are several owners of this error, and I am not going to criticise them individually, because it is wrong to criticise the people who work for us and the people who were sitting in the chair. I am not going to do that.

There were a series of events that led to this outcome, and it is a pity. I do appreciate the way that the Speaker has handled it from the chair. I also appreciate the Manager of Opposition Business's good grace in dealing with what is clearly human error—something that I would have done when I was the Manager of Opposition Business in the House, as I often did. The member for Grayndler lost 73 votes when he was in this parliament. But this is not the case that happened here.

Unfortunately, there was an inadvertent error. There is a mechanism to fix that, and that mechanism has been agreed by me and the Manager of Opposition Business in the House. I appreciate that. Since both sides are supporting this bill and, therefore, we are really arguing the toss over something that is not very important—we all support the bill—in order to be able to advance the matter further, I will seek leave to move that so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the International Tax Agreements Amendment Bill 2016 being restored immediately and proceedings being resumed with the second reading to be moved.

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