Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on a further point of order, President, to seek that you bring the minister to the question and to ask you, President, when this chamber comes back to bring to the chamber a sense of ruling guidelines as to how questions can be structured such that they may actually have a test of direct relevance enforced. That's because the ruling you made before essentially means that if any word is contained in a question then you are going to deem it to be directly relevant if the minister somehow hangs off of that word. In that case it makes no difference as to how a question is worded, how specific a question can be; it is just, President, the fact—