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

On the point of order, Mr Speaker: as you're aware, there's a large amount of precedent with respect to the moving of amendments. The form of the amendment that is before the House now fits under the Practice at pages 310 and 311, dealing with the omission of all words in order to substitute an alternative proposition, which is what this does. In terms of whether or not it is relevant, it is true that what I have moved an amendment that does more than the original motion, but it is certainly relevant to the original motion. Indeed, everything that the original motion does is still there. The motion only seeks to suspend standing orders for the purpose of this week, which is what the original motion did.

What the Leader of the House is proposing is, effectively, that you can word a motion in a way that makes it unamendable. That is a decision for the House. These precedents go back to 1905. This is actually one of my favourite precedents. It was about home rule for Ireland. The whole purpose of the motion was to call on the king to grant home rule for Ireland. The amendment was to not do that at all, and it was viewed as being in order. Similarly, page 311 refers to it as being common practice in this House for a motion whose entire purpose is to censure or condemn a prime minister or a minister to have amendments moved to it, all ruled in order, that say, 'Yet, instead of that, we're going to condemn the Leader of the Opposition.' Those amendments have been determined to be in order, even though they have done none of the things that the original motion has sought to do.

So I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that what the Leader of the House is asking for is something quite different to previous rulings. I accept what he says—there is a way of reading that standing order that would knock this amendment out—but the House hasn't done that since 1905. We have a wealth of precedent that something of this order is, indeed, in order, and I would put it to you that the best course of action is for it to be properly before the House and for the House to make a decision as to whether or not it wants to amend the motion in this way.

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