Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Just while I have members here, and the member for Kennedy for here, I'm going to address the length of the motion. Some motions have become inordinately long, and this is against the practice of the House. The motion moved by the member for Kennedy obviously places the Speaker in a difficult position, because you're not sure when it's going to end—it was very, very long indeed. In fact, it went for nearly three minutes. Now, previous Speakers have warned of this practice. It's outlined clearly on page 297 of Practice where Speaker Snedden said that if the motions continued to be of that length, he would take action. He didn't need to and I don't want to, but members need to know that the motion needs to be a concise point that the House can make a decision on, and motions shouldn't narrate a long argument or debate the matter. I've been very practical with that in accepting there always is an element of that, but if that becomes the dominating feature then I want to be predictable, so I'm letting members know: if it gets to that point, if there was a repeat of what just occurred, I would simply withdraw the call, ask the member to go and amend their motion and give them the call at a later date.

See this speech in context