Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I have a question to you and I am mindful of the interpretation of the standing orders which you gave during the minister for health’s last answer. I would simply ask you whether you have decided that standing order 98 no longer applies.

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

I am not answering that question because it needed to be dealt with at the time.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now is the time, because I just sat down.

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

I would ask you whether 65(a) ever applies to the member for Sturt. The member for Sturt—

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Pyne interjecting

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

No, I wish to give you some advice now. I will give you the advice if I take what you have put to me as a point of order, because you are quite correct: you have risen directly after the incident, and that is all right. While I was waiting for the member for O’Connor, who had indicated that he had a matter for me, you indicated to me that you had a question to me.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You didn’t give me the call when I was standing at the dispatch box at the end of the minister’s answer.

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

That is because I was hopeful that that event was over and done with. If you want to start again on a point of order I will give you the call.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate the call. I actually rose to take a point of order at the end of the minister for health’s answer to that question. I was clearly standing at the dispatch box for several seconds and you allowed the minister to finish her answer, which you are entirely within your right to do. I then did not get the opportunity to take the point of order because you did not recognise me, so I put it to you as a question. But now I am happy to take it as a point of order. Mr Speaker, have you decided that standing order 98, ‘Questions to ministers’, about what they can be questioned upon, no longer applies?

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

I think that I may have given a ruling to you about that matter when you raised it first during the answer. It is a point of order that relates to the question. The question had been asked and I can think of no precedent that allows me to take the action that you wish me to take.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Further to the point of order, Mr Speaker: how can the opposition know that when a minister is asked an anodyne question she will stray off the areas of her responsibility so graphically that it would then cause us to raise section 98 of the standing orders?

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

The bigger question is: how can the person in the chair know? I understand that to be a problem. But that has been the way that this place has dealt with these matters in the past and, unless the standing orders are changed, I cannot see there is any way around the problem that the member for Sturt is highlighting. That was the basis of my original ruling, if he wants it to be described as a ruling, which said when he raised that point halfway through the answer that the question had been in order at the time it had been asked.