Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Procedure I present the committee’s report entitled Maintenance of the standing and sessional orders: Second report—Review of sessional orders adopted on 17 March 2005 and 9 February 2006; and other matters, together with the minutes of proceedings.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—This report, the second by the Standing Committee on Procedure on the maintenance of the standing and sessional orders, deals with two sets of sessional orders that have been in operation for some time now. The first, comprising sessional order 77, and second, the suspension of standing order 100(f), relate to the anticipation rule and they were put in place in March 2005. In effect, these changes abolish the application of the rule from question time and restrict the application of the rule at other times to substantive debates. The original intent was that these changes would operate for the remainder of this parliament, but the committee decided that 18 months was long enough for it to evaluate their operation. The new arrangements have proven to be non-controversial and have allowed for debate to proceed freely, and the committee has therefore recommended their permanent adoption.

The report also evaluates sessional orders adopted by the House on 9 February this year. They cover:

• revised arrangements for committee and delegation reports, whereby they can be referred to the Main Committee for further debate later on the Monday that they are tabled in the House;
• ensuring that members’ three-minute statements in the Main Committee proceed for the full 30 minutes, regardless of whether there is an interruption due to a division in the House;
• providing the chair of the Main Committee with another option in dealing with disorder should it arise, other than having to adjourn the Main Committee and report the matter to the House; and
• setting a limit of 30 minutes for debate on dissent motions.

All of these sessional orders are in place until the end of this year, when they will lapse unless action is taken. The committee supports the continuation of all of these as permanent standing orders, as these changes have proved to be common-sense initiatives and have not attracted any adverse comments from members.

The provision of additional speaking time on committee and delegation reports in particular has worked extremely well. So far, 14 reports have been debated on Monday afternoons in the Main Committee for a total of six hours and 26 minutes, and 38 members made use of this opportunity. The committee expects to see increasing use of this mechanism as committees come to appreciate the opportunity it provides for wider debate on the actual day of tabling than would otherwise be possible in the limited time available in the House.

In examining these sessional orders, the committee has also made some additional recommendations. The first is to allow for automatic removal of committee and delegation reports from the Notice Paper after a period of eight sitting Mondays has passed. This mirrors arrangements currently in place for private members’ business.

The second recommendation proposes a new option for tabling of delegation reports, which would see them presented to the Speaker at any time, and thus deemed to have been presented to the House. Such reports would then bypass the chamber and be listed automatically for debate on the next sitting Monday in the Main Committee. Although delegation reports only account for a small percentage of the total number of reports presented on Mondays, this option would result in some saving of time in the chamber that might then be used for private members’ business. The committee has proposed that this option be available for delegation reports on a trial basis from the start of 2007.

The report also addresses three other comparatively minor matters:

• the current requirement for the Clerk to make a formal announcement if the Speaker is absent at the start of a sitting (standing order 18);
• formalising the presentation of explanatory memorandums to private members’ bills without the need to seek leave (standing order 41); and
• clarifying in the standing orders that a member seated in the Serjeant-at-Arms’ seat during a division is entitled to have their vote counted.

I hope the House will look favourably on each of these recommendations made by the committee, as we believe that they are sensible changes to the standing orders. In conclusion I would like to thank members of the committee—I notice my deputy chair, the member for Banks, is here in the House and I thank him for his support—and of course the secretariat for their continued hard work on the Procedure Committee. I commend the report to the House.

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I am pleased to be able to speak to this report of the Standing Committee on Procedure. It is the second report by the committee as part of its ongoing reference into the maintenance of the standing and sessional orders. The report covers quite a number of issues, as the chair, the member for McPherson, has indicated. I would like to focus on two of these today: the presentation of committee reports and the setting of time limits for dissent motions.

As the chair indicated in her contribution, this year saw the introduction of new arrangements for debating committee and delegation reports once they had been presented in the House on a Monday. The Procedure Committee’s November 2005 report, Procedure relating to House committees, responded to the complaints of members about the limited time in the House and Main Committee for the presentation of and debate on committee reports. Generally only the chair and deputy chair had the opportunity to speak when a report was tabled in the House, and then for only five minutes each. When a report was referred to the Main Committee for further debate there was often a significant time lag. Given the amount of time and effort that members put into their committee work, it was disappointing that so little opportunity for debate on the report was possible. The Procedure Committee therefore proposed a number of sessional orders to allow for referral of committee reports to the Main Committee on the day they were presented in the House. Anyone wishing to speak to the report could each have 10 minutes speaking time. Those sessional orders were adopted by the House on 9 February 2006 and have now been evaluated by the committee.

As the chair indicated, the response has been encouraging, with 38 members speaking in the Main Committee on Monday afternoons on committee and delegation reports. Not all reports have been referred to the Main Committee in this way—it is a matter of judgement for each committee to decide whether the nature of the report merits such a referral. However, the changes have increased the number of people able to debate a report and that is a positive development.

I note that, in the submission from the Clerk on this matter, he had noted some signs among members of lack of familiarity with arrangements. Detailed instructions have been issued to committee secretaries advising them of the new arrangements. However, when all is said and done, it is up to members to support these arrangements, put their names on speakers lists and encourage the referral of their committee reports to the Main Committee.

I would now like to turn to another sessional order that has been trialled this year, providing for specific time limits for debates on dissent motions. The mover and next member speaking each were allocated 10 minutes, and any other members five minutes, with a total limit on the debate of 30 minutes. As the report notes, prior to adopting this sessional order there was no provision for termination of a dissent debate, other than there being no more speakers or the moving of a closure motion, and the use of closure motions was very common.

There have been two dissent motions moved since the sessional order was adopted. In the first instance, three closure motions were moved. In the second instance, some debate was possible before a closure motion on the question was moved.

The committee would like to see members have an opportunity to set out the arguments in support of and against the particular ruling under dispute, without premature curtailment through the use of closure motions. The committee did consider whether dissent motions should be exempt from closure motions, but was not in favour of this at present. The committee has recommended that the time limits for dissent motions be made permanent standing orders, and will continue to monitor their operation.

I would like to thank the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the member for McPherson, for her hard work and cooperative approach to running the committee, and my colleagues on the committee for their hard work. This report covers a wide range of matters, there is unanimous support for its recommendations among committee members and I commend the report to the House.

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

In accordance with standing order 39(c), the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.