John Madigan (Victoria, Democratic Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That general business orders of the day relating to the private senators' bills listed for today be called on and considered in the following order:

No. 2, the Health Insurance Amendment (Medicare Funding for Certain Types of Abortion) Bill 2013 and no. 7 Fair Trade (Australian Standards) Bill 2013.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, we will support Senator Madigan's motion but we just want to put on record that we have had a Dynamic Red in circulation now for a couple of days, which has talked about the order in which these two private senators' bills will be considered this morning. It is just difficult at the last minute to change the program in such a way.

Of course, we will do it—private senators' business belongs to private senators and this is Senator Madigan's time. But it would just be useful in future to have discussion beforehand if we had a proposition to make such a change. I, myself, know much more about the trade policy than I needed to know at this time this morning! So in terms of process it would be very useful, where there is going to be a recommendation to change a publicly-acknowledged program, if we had some prior knowledge.

Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I indicate that the government supports the rearrangement, and that we are doing so on the basis that the accepted convention is that private senators' business time is the time of the senator who has been allocated that. Senator Madigan has indicated that he wishes to alter the order of the bills that he had listed. Given that this is essentially his time this morning we thought that it was reasonable to accept the proposition of Senator Madigan.

Question agreed to.