Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

You can resume your seat. The difficulty is with the question. The question was a short question. It was a succinct question, but the problem with it is that it's unanswerable when the question is: do you believe this'll kill the weekend?

Mr Albanese interjecting—

And you've just made my point: it's not a question; it's a political statement. So I'm not going to insist on a yes/no answer. I will say to the Deputy Prime Minister: there wasn't any question about alternatives and he just needs to confine himself now to the policy matter that was in the question. But that's why I allowed some latitude. If you want me to strictly enforce the rules on questions, I'm happy to start, but I don't think you'll be very happy with it. The Deputy Prime Minister.

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