Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I refer you to page 554 of House of Representatives Practice, dealing with length of answers. Given that, prior to the election, the Prime Minister said that he was going to have a more productive House that was—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Surely, this is ironic and is clearly out of—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Leader of the House will resume his seat. The member for North Sydney will get to his question.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Page 554 of House of Representatives Practice refers to the length of answers and says that there has been a history in this place of calling for quorums on each occasion that a minister’s answer goes for more than five minutes. Given that today we had four answers in excess of five minutes each, and it is a pattern of behaviour from this government, I ask that you look into the issue of the length of answers by ministers to their own questions, and, significantly, if there is any opportunity for us as a parliament to ensure that the answers are of a shorter nature and more relevant to the questions that are being asked.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I just make the overarching point that it is not my intention to take questions on matters of the proceedings, but on this occasion, to assist the honourable member for North Sydney, I am happy to make some comments. The member for Flinders did the appropriate thing and raised this by way of a point of order on one of the answers given, and I made a comment on that. I think that if we look at House of Representatives Practice in detail, it indicates that, whilst from time to time occupants of the chair have tried to curtail the length of ministers’ answers—and to the certain extent that is what I have done—the chair ‘has no power to require that it be followed’. That is one of the difficulties.

Can I make the observation that if backbenchers can do a good job of explaining a case in a 90-second statement or a three-minute statement or, indeed, make the case for a number of things in a five-minute adjournment speech, I think that all of us could probably make do with five minutes. Today actually was not the worst day for the length of answers, but I think that this is something that the whole House has to deal with. It is not something that is in the power of the chair to actually put in place.