Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, on the same point of order: I rise to support Senator Macdonald in his comments. Senator Ludwig has raised some interesting issues, but nevertheless the original topic raised by Senator Macdonald needs to be referred to the President and the President needs to make a determination about some of those definitional issues but, whatever the outcome, we need to have some consistency. I think there has been some inconsistency in sometimes ruling on a point of order and sometimes not. Could I suggest one further aspect that the President may wish to examine and that would be that, once a point of order has been raised, if the President wishes to dispense with that point of order forthwith after the first speaker, that may stop, for example, the Manager of Government Business rising to his feet to also speak on the same point of order when the point of order is quite obvious in the first instance. The President might also wish to examine that issue.