Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business (House)) Share this | Hansard source

A point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker: I simply ask you to review the ruling you've just given. I refer to both the standing orders and Practice. I also go to the gravity of the decision. I respect that you've taken it initially on advice, but you need to bear in mind that the impact of this ruling will be to prevent the House deliberating on the issue at all. That will be the impact.

First of all, I refer you to standing order 150. Standing order 150(a) states:

An amendment may be moved to any part of a bill, if the amendment is within the title or relevant to the subject matter of the bill and conforms to the standing orders.

You've made the ruling on the basis that the amendments are not within the title of the bill. That's true. The title of the bill deals only with unpaid domestic violence leave. But the standing orders are quite specific—either 'within the title or relevant to the subject matter of the bill'. While these amendments are not within the title of the bill, there is no doubt at all that they are relevant to the subject matter of the bill. Everything that these amendments do is within the subject matter of the bill itself—dealing with domestic violence leave. The amendments deal with the exact same clauses of the act for workers who are in the exact same catastrophic circumstances. The circumstances that these amendments deal with are identical to the circumstances that the government's bill deals with. They deal with the same clauses of the principal act but do so in a different way.

If the only thing within the standing orders were that an amendment has to be within the title of the bill, I would not be raising a point of order. I simply suggest that the ruling you've made makes the words 'or relevant to the subject matter of the bill' irrelevant, and the ruling should not make some standing orders irrelevant. Those words are not only within the standing orders; they are repeated verbatim on page 376 of the Practice.

I simply ask that you allow the House to deal with the issue. I respect absolutely that these amendments are beyond the part of the standing orders that says that an amendment can only be within the title of the bill, but that is not the only thing that the standing orders say. They specifically say 'or relevant to the subject matter of the bill'. I suggest that it is impossible to argue that these amendments do not directly deal with the subject matter of the bill that is before the House.

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