Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Page 432 of Practice deals specifically with consideration in detail. You will find under the subheading, 'Consideration in detail', if you go to the third paragraph:

The Federation Chamber goes through the schedule portfolio by portfolio, debating for each portfolio the question 'that the proposed expenditure be agreed to.'

That is what I wanted to read to you.

The allocation of the call during this part of the parliament's procedures follows the allocation of the call for when we are debating, not the allocation of the call as if it were a form of question time. If it were question time, the questions to the executive would alternate between opposition members and government backbench, with a minister responding on each occasion. In the time I have been in this room tonight, that is what you have been following. What I am advising you, Deputy Speaker, is that is the way the standing orders work for question time. We are not in question time. The Federation Chamber is debating a question. Between each speaker you have been repeating to the chamber the question we are debating. That means the speeches from the minister, even if they amount in their content to a response to a question, count as speeches from the government. If government backbenchers are to make speeches and occupy time during this, then it can only happen if the minister does not seek the call immediately after an opposition question has been made and defers to a government backbencher. But the call must alternate because we are debating a motion.

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