Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I inform the House that the opposition became aware of this proposed suspension of standing orders around 2.15 today, when the member for Goldstein approached me to provide me with notice of that, and I thank her for doing that. I was then informed that the government intends to support this.

Just weeks ago the government made changes to the standing orders, through the normal process, to add standing order 65A, which aims to set out a set of new and modified arrangements to deal with the fact that we do have a different composition in this parliament than we have had previously. Standing order 65A, amongst other things, is predicated on the assumption that there will be—when you work through the maths—22 questions, because it refers to a crossbench member seeking the call on the fifth, on the 13th and on the 21st questions.

As the member for Goldstein has rightly said, in fact, today the Prime Minister brought question time to an end after 18 questions. And in the several question times in the last sitting period we saw the Prime Minister bring question time to an end after 18 or 20 questions. We've had conduct from the government which is different from the premise on which it drafted standing order 65A, brought it to the House and secured the support of the House for it.

I make no criticism of the crossbench for bringing this motion forward today, but I do say that these are matters within the control of the government. Given the conduct that we have seen from the Prime Minister today and in several question times in the last sitting period, where the Prime Minister shut down questions after 18 or indeed 20 questions, unless the Prime Minister changes his practices, the practical impact of what is put before the House today—let's be in no doubt about it—will be one less question for the opposition and one more question for the crossbench.

I say to the House, and I say particularly to the government, that this is not an exercise of good faith by the government. The government just weeks ago set out a set of arrangements in the standing orders. There were extensive discussions between all of the parties: government, opposition and crossbench. There were a whole range of discussions on these matters. We did raise concerns with a number of them, but the government set out a set of arrangements, and that has now been set out in the standing orders. Literally a week or two later, in terms of sitting weeks that have elapsed, the government is now proposing, as I'm advised, to support a material change to those arrangements, which will have the practical effect of reducing by one question the number of questions that the opposition receives and increasing by one the number of questions that the crossbench receives.

Again, I make no criticism of the crossbench. I do criticise the government. This is not the way that the government should be engaging with the opposition. We've heard a lot about kinder, gentler politics; we've heard a lot about a more cooperative and consultative approach. This is the very opposite of that. This is being done with absolutely no notice to the opposition and the practical effect of it is to reduce by one the number of questions that the opposition is able to ask.

I say to the Prime Minister that he could resolve this issue simply by committing that he will maintain a practice of having 22 questions, which is the basis on which standing order 65A was drafted. The opposition will oppose this motion on the practical grounds that its substantive effect is to reduce the number of questions that we receive. The government could very simply solve this issue by committing to having 22 questions in question time.

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