Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Procedure Committee’s first report of 2008, in particular the restructuring of question time. I have never spoken about a Procedure Committee report before, but this particular report raises some really interesting questions of principle. It is fair to say that the Senate was founded in 1901 certainly as a house of review but, far more importantly, as a control on executive power. That, of course, received a great fillip in the 1970s, when Senator Murphy developed the committee system.