Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The difficulty in this—and please let me have my opportunity to address the point of order—is that the question first of all made an assertion, which may or may not have been part of the question because it depends on whether the senator provided an inflection at the end where he said ‘in view of the huge delay’. They were the words he started with—completely wrong but an assertion nonetheless, unless of course he was asking a question as part of that assertion. Senator Conroy was responding not only to the substance of the question, which was to address when, but also in part to a huge assertion made at the beginning of the question. It is appropriate for a minister to address an assertion as well as the primary question if a senator is going to include assertions in the primary question. We have dealt with this before in question time. An assertion is not part of the question and should not be part of the question. There is no point of order.