Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I have listened to the Leader of the House and heard his point. I wanted to hear it carefully, which is why I asked him to repeat part of it when I had to deal with an interjecting member. His point about whether something's factually accurate or not is not a requirement of the standing orders. You may well argue it is something to be considered, but it would be something impossible to judge in question time. My approach on that is allowing the capacity for an answer, if a question does have factual inaccuracies in it, to deal with and expose them for the House to consider.

The concern I have is with imputations of improper motives. That question did go close, but they were assertions and it was to the Prime Minister. The previous question from the member for Grayndler I almost ruled out of order. Actually, on reflection, the last part probably should have been for the same reason as with the member for Isaacs, which is that it is highly disorderly to impute an improper motive for the reason why a minister might be acting in the way they have or their department's acted in the way it has. I have listened very carefully to that. I sympathise with the position of the Leader of the House, but I am going to allow the question because I'm just not in a position to judge factual accuracy in question time. Assertions can be made. As far as the Leader of the House is concerned, they might be ridiculous assertions. They might be factually incorrect assertions. But for me to just rule them out actually prevents those being answered, so I'm going to call the Prime Minister.

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