Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Wright is not helping. This is why I don't like people interjecting, as you saw with the earlier question from the member for Mallee, because it's my job to listen very closely. The Leader of the Opposition was making statements about misleading—that's a very abject term, and if he wanted to pursue that he'd need to pursue that by way of a motion of deliberately misleading, which he well knows. Even asking a question about a minister or a prime minister misleading does open things up. That is quite a claim, and I think it opens things up for a minister or a prime minister to be able to defend themselves—that's the first point—and there's lots of precedent with that.

The other thing I listened to very closely, because I have allowed it, is reference to a previous answer. As I've made clear in previous rulings, that does open the door, but it doesn't open it to an extent—as the member for Isaacs discovered—that you can just, by merely stating that, go to any matter you wish to. But I listened very carefully to the Prime Minister, who said that he would refer to that, on that basis, a little. I've been listening to him, and the Prime Minister's able to do that briefly by way of comparison, but not for the entire answer.

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