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

on indulgence—This is not the first time that you've give a report of that nature. I think it's important to advise the House that the fact that the conduct continued was not a rejection of the reports that you've given. There is a very specific context that has led to those motions being moved in the Federation Chamber, and it goes to what happens in this chamber.

It has become the practice in a way that it never used to be—in particular, the Leader of the Opposition, when moving suspension motions, is not allowed to deliver a speech anymore. That the member be no further heard is moved immediately. Certainly when I first arrived—and as I saw under the Howard government, the Rudd and Gillard governments, the Turnbull government and the Abbott government—the question is whether or not leave is granted. If leave is not granted, then ordinarily the suspension debate takes place. If it is felt that the opposition have moved it out of the blue or that they've been moving them too often, occasionally that the member be no longer heard would be moved. Instead now it's just become how this place operates. In those circumstances, the opposition has no way of pushing back other than to move resolutions of that form.

I don't want to delay the House any further but, given the seriousness of the report—and it's not the first time that you as the Speaker have reported that—it should be made absolutely clear that if the House returns to its ordinary procedures and way of operating, then we will not see that again in the Federation Chamber. But if we continue, this term, to have a situation which has no parallel in this chamber, then the sorts of reports that have been given just now by the Speaker will refer to events that will occur again.

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