Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, from time to time you have recourse to quoting rulings of former Presidents. Former Presidents never had the sessional order which required compliance to direct relevance. Therefore, with great respect, yet again, Mr President, the coalition makes this plea to you that if the changed sessional order, which we just confirmed again the other day, is to be implemented then recourse to previous rulings clearly cannot apply to sessional orders that were not in existence at that time.