Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I thank both the Leader of the House and the Manager of Opposition Business. As I've made clear before, for a number of years now on this topic—as have previous speakers, particularly Speaker Andrew—whilst the standing orders were quoted accurately by the Leader of the House, the Practice has been lenient with respect to inferences and imputations. That's certainly been the case. Indeed, Speaker Andrew pointed out that, if they were strictly enforced, most questions would simply not be in order or would not be able to be asked. I've always said I'm happy to look at how we might change things in the future, but if we had a strict reading of questions I would have a very strict reading of the standing orders around answers, and that could obviously change the nature of things. The other point that Speaker Andrew made was that ruling questions out of order on that basis does prevent the minister from having any opportunity, as the Manager of Opposition Business said. So on this occasion I'm going to allow the question to proceed. It's up to the minister how he deals with that.

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