Business of the House - Days and Hours of Meeting

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell—Manager of Opposition Business) (09:41): Indeed that is what democracy is all about. The whole tradition of democracy is about the rights of minorities—always has been; always will be—and it should be in a rights based society. That has always been a Liberal principle.

I think the Leader of the House has belled the cat. That all sounds very lovely when you listen to it—how democratic and smooth everything will be and how lovely the parliament will function with these changes to the standing orders. However, taking my leader's instruction, I think we can be constructive on certain machinery changes that the leader has proposed, but then unfortunately I feel like we must be critical about some other changes that the Leader of the House is proposing here. On the veneer of increased transparency and democratic operation, we have some antidemocratic measures that the government is proposing in its first action.

I will say upfront that, as a lifelong constitutional monarchist and a great supporter of our constitutional monarchy and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, while we are still, in my view, in the official mourning period for Her Majesty the Queen, we do accept reluctantly the changes to remove all references to 'the Queen' from the standing orders and replace them with 'the Sovereign', which is the bulk of the work that the leader has put forward in today's standing orders. It's a reluctant but necessary change, so, there you go, we have supported you on something. Even as a constitutional monarchist, I've agreed to that.

To move along, sessional order 65A is of course the real meat of what the government is proposing to change in these standing orders. While government members will be disinterested because they now have a supermajority in this place, the whole purpose of having a question time is scrutiny of the executive, not of the government. It's not of you on the backbench but of these people on the frontbench. The leader referenced that ministers will be happy because they'll be able to get out of here quicker. That isn't the principle of effective, transparent government. In fact, if you're a government minister—and I have been—you should know your brief, you should welcome questions and you should be able to answer those questions. That's the point of being in the parliament, and the parliament has an important function on behalf of Australians to say to the executive: 'What are you doing in government? Can you explain to the Australian people what your legislative and political agenda is?' And you have to defend it in the scrutiny of an open, democratic forum.

In its first term, this Labor government under Prime Minister Albanese reduced the number of questions that we have in question time. The average number of questions asked by the opposition went from 10 in the 46th Parliament, the one that we heard was antidemocratic and not transparent, to just seven in the 47th Parliament. That's a big drop. The average number of questions overall fell from the 46th Parliament to the 47th Parliament, and question time ended before 3.10 pm more often in the 47th Parliament, 29 times compared to only 17 times in the 46th Parliament. We know on many occasions the Prime Minister urgently cut off question time because, simply, it wasn't going very well for the government.

These changes that are proposed by the Leader of the House do something very sneaky. I am sad that he mentioned it but didn't say what this would mean. The heading for these changes is 'more opportunities for crossbench questions'. But the crossbench is under no illusion that the reordering of the numbers is after the cut-off that the Prime Minister usually uses. So there won't be more opportunity for the crossbench to get more questions because, on a normal given day, or when things are going badly for the government, the Prime Minister routinely guillotines question time—as is his right. So there will be fewer opposition questions in this parliament, as there were last parliament, and there will be fewer crossbench questions in this parliament, unless the Prime Minister—it's up to him, of course—decides that he's having a good day and extends question time a little bit longer. That, in our view, is a sneaky attempt to rewrite this to, over time, slowly—not under the scrutiny of anyone who pays a lot of attention except for the most ardent watchers of this place—reduce questions bit by bit. Overall, the average number of questions will go down, opposition questions will go down and crossbench questions will go down. How does that help the operation of this parliament? Our view is that it does not and our view is that this is an antidemocratic measure.

That's my criticism. I will now be constructive; the pendulum is going to swing, and we're going back to 'constructive'. We have some solutions. I move the amendments to the motion moved by the Leader of the House as circulated in my name:

(1) Replace proposed sessional order 65A(a)(i) and (ii) with: (a) During Question Time, priority shall be given to a crossbench Member seeking the call on the fifth, thirteenth and seventeenth questions;

(2) Amend standing orders 1, 45, 97, 100, 101, 104, 105, 183 and 197 as follows:

1 Maximum speaking times

The maximum time limits that apply to debates, speeches and statements are as follows.

Subject	time (max)
Bills — Other Government — second reading
Mover	30 mins
Leader of Opposition or Member representing	30 mins
Minister at conclusion of debate	10 mins
Any other Member	10 mins
Bills — Private Members' — second reading
Mover
At time of presentation	10 mins
In continuation, on resumption of debate (if required by mover)	5 mins
Any other Member	10 mins or lesser time determined by the Selection Committee
(standing orders 41(c) and 222)
Members' statements
90 second statements
In the House—whole period on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays	30 mins
In the Federation Chamber—whole period on Mondays	45 mins
Each Member (but not a Minister or Parliamentary Secretary)	90 seconds
(standing order 43)
3 minute constituency statements
Whole period on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays	30 mins
Whole period at 12.30 pm on Tuesdays	60 mins
Whole period at 4 pm on Tuesdays	30 mins
Each Member	3 mins
(standing order 193)
Question Time
Each question	45 secs
Each answer	3 mins
Supplementary questions
Each supplementary question	20 secs
Each supplementary answer	90 sec
(standing orders 100 and 104)

45 Order of government business

The Leader of the House may arrange the order of notices and orders of the day for government business on the Notice Paper as he or she thinks fit.

97 Daily Question Time

(a) Question Time shall begin at 2 pm on each sitting day, at which time the Speaker shall interrupt any business before the House and call on questions without notice.

(b) The business interrupted shall be dealt with in the following manner:

(i) if a division is in progress at the time, the division shall be completed and the result announced; or

(ii) the Speaker shall set the time for resumption of debate.

(c) Question Time shall not conclude until at least eight questions have been asked by opposition Members.

100 Rules for questions

The following general rules apply to all questions:

(a) Questions must not be debated.

(b) A question fully answered must not be asked again.

(c) For questions regarding persons:

(i) questions must not reflect on or be critical of the character or conduct of a Member, a Senator, the Queen, the Governor-General, a State Governor, or a member of the judiciary: their conduct may only be challenged on a substantive motion; and

(ii) questions critical of the character or conduct of other persons must be in writing.

(d) Questions must not contain:

(i) statements of facts or names of persons, unless they can be authenticated and are strictly necessary to make the question intelligible;

(ii) arguments;

(iii) inferences;

(iv) imputations;

(v) insults;

(vi) ironical expressions; or

(vii) hypothetical matter.

(e) Questions must not refer to debates in the current session, or to proceedings of a committee not reported to the House.

(f) The duration of each question is limited to 45 seconds. The duration of each supplementary question is limited to 20 seconds.

101 Speaker's discretion about questions

The Speaker may:

(a) direct a Member to change the language of a question asked during Question Time if the language is inappropriate or does not otherwise conform with the standing orders;

(b) allow up to five supplementary questions to be asked, per question time, to clarify an answer to a question asked during Question Time—one from the Leader of the Opposition, one from any Opposition member, two from government members and one from a crossbench member; and

(c) change the language of a question in writing if the language is inappropriate or does not otherwise conform with the standing orders.

104 Answers

(a) An answer must be directly relevant to the question.

(b) A point of order regarding relevance may be taken only once in respect of each answer.

(c) The duration of each answer is limited to 3 minutes. The duration of an answer to a supplementary question is limited to 90 seconds.

105 Replies to written questions

(a) A Minister's written reply to a question must be delivered to the Clerk. The Clerk shall provide a copy of the reply to the Member who asked the question, and the question and reply shall be published.

(b) If a reply has not been received 60 days after a question first appeared on the Notice Paper, the Member who asked the question may, at the conclusion of Question Time, ask that the Minister concerned present reasons for the delay in answering. The reasons shall be presented by the Minister at the next sitting.

183 Establishment of Federation Chamber

The Federation Chamber shall be established as a committee of the House to consider matters referred to it as follows:

(a) proceedings on bills to the completion of the consideration in detail stage;

(b) orders of the day for the resumption of debate on any motion;

(c) subject to paragraph (a), private Members' notices and other items of private Members' and committee and delegation business referred in accordance with a Selection Committee determination pursuant to standing order 222; and

(d) further statements on a matter when statements have commenced in the House.

197 Return of matters to the House

The Federation Chamber may return a matter to the House before its consideration is completed:

(a) A matter may be returned to the House on a motion moved without notice at any time by a Minister—

That further proceedings be conducted in the House.

The motion shall be put without amendment or debate. If the Federation Chamber agrees to, or is unable to resolve, this question, the bill or order of the day shall be returned to the House. Consideration in the House must continue from the point reached in the Federation Chamber and the House must resolve any issues that the Federation Chamber reports.

(b) The House may at any time require a matter to be returned for further consideration, on a motion moved without notice by a Minister. The matter must be set down for consideration at a later hour that day.

(3) Insert sessional order 49A:

49 A Moving a motion of condolence

A motion of condolence may only be moved immediately following Prayers.

We only gave short notice of the amendments I'm moving today ourselves. I apologise to the House for the notice I've given. If we get 20 minutes notice, unfortunately you will get no notice.

The amendments I'm moving do something important in relation to 65A. They return something that has been here before and is in operation of the Senate; that is, they allow for supplementary questions to be asked both by the opposition and the crossbench. This would increase transparency in this parliament. I know many of my crossbench colleagues would support the operation of supplementary questions. Not only would a government minister have to be prepared for a question; they'd have to be prepared for a follow-up question, which can only be a good thing, especially on the complexity of the operation of government in today's society. We have the ability to ask any minister any question, but if they don't answer the question we have no ability to follow that up. This is a sensible reform that will return supplementary questions to this chamber, and I welcome the proposal.

In the previous parliament, the conduct of the government was, as I've highlighted, antidemocratic. In relation to the standing order changes to committees, I—

The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business can resume his seat for a moment. I will hear from the Leader of the House, on a point of order.

Mr Burke: I'm just not sure how to handle this. An amendment is meant to be fully read out unless it's been circulated. I've just checked with the clerks because there is not a copy of the amendments at the table. I'm not sure if they were handed to the Table Office and something has gone wrong, but they certainly haven't been circulated. If the Manager of Opposition Business has to read it out word for word, I'm not sure he will get it out in the time remaining. I'm not sure how we handle it.

The SPEAKER: We can find a way through this. I thank the Leader of the House. The normal process is that amendments will be circulated, as the member for Warringah has done and the member for Wentworth has done. On this occasion, that hasn't occurred. The manager is, I assume, moving the amendments as part of his speech now. They will need to be seconded but we do need a copy of them—normally before we get to this point, if that makes sense. We don't have them as yet; we're making copies now, so we will have them. He has three minutes left and then we'll have a seconder to those amendments, just to find a way through this. The manager has the call.

Mr HAWKE: I accept that, and I did explain this was a very last-minute process, from the government's point of view, in providing the very substantial standing orders changes, and we did our best to produce amendments very quickly and provide them to the parliament. I've already apologised to members, but we had no idea what the government was doing. Thank you for that reminder about the procedure.

I move back to our conversation about the antidemocratic nature of some of these changes. On committees, that sounds very reasonable: why can't we just share the deputy chairs? The government knows exactly what it is doing in relation to choosing the portfolio areas where it will change the mechanism for electing a deputy chair. That is designed to reduce scrutiny and transparency as well. There was zero consultation with the opposition. I don't know if there was consultation with the crossbench on this issue.

However, the selection of the Standing Committee on Economics is no accident. What the government are saying is that they want less pressure from the opposition on the issue of the economy. They are saying they do not want an opposition member in the deputy chair, asking questions on that committee, raising matters and scrutinising the office bearers that are brought before that committee. And they are saying that of course they want less pressure on the economy. The economy is the No. 1 issue of our day. It is the matter of our time, and the government's agenda on the economy is more government intervention, higher taxes and, of course, an unrestricted commitment to increased government spending—endless government spending! So it's no surprise that the government have said, 'We want to change the procedures on the economics committee.' The economics committee has been a vibrant and important part of our democratic system, and deputy chairs play a vibrant and important part in that. The government are also trying to play politics with parliamentary committees on the topics of their choosing, and we understand why that is. We do not, obviously, support those changes.

In the time I have left, I will refer to a couple of the things that we think are important. I do welcome the Leader of the House's commitment to more speech time. I think that is relevant to this parliament—here and in the Federation Chamber. It's a proposal we welcome and would have put forward, so we support those changes. However, we will have no choice but to oppose the government's amendments.

There are some other matters on which we are moving amendments, including questions in writing. We have increasingly seen a lack of transparency from this government in relation to questions in writing. There are ministers who are failing to respond to this time-honoured mechanism within the prescribed 60 days. According to the Procedure Office, there were more overdue questions in writing in the 47th Parliament than in the 45th and the 46th. This is an executive—just so everyone is clear here—that is not committed to transparency. There will be fewer questions during question time, less scrutiny of government, fewer responses to questions in writing for the parliament. What is going on inside the government? Not only will we have less opportunity to ask; we'll have fewer answers, and we will not know what our own government is doing. So, when the people send us here to do this—and this has happened more in previous parliaments—now we'll have fewer and fewer opportunities under the second term of the Albanese government.

We believe the government's amendments to the standing orders, as they stand, need amendment. Without further time, I will just flag that, while there are some good changes here, we will be opposing the government's amendments.

The SPEAKER: Your time has concluded. For the benefit of all members, I'll explain the process. So everyone is clear, the Leader of the House has moved a series of amendments to the standing orders. The Manager of Opposition Business has replied to that with his own amendments to those suggestions, and they are now available for members to peruse at the table. If members wish to know what the proposed changes are, they can be viewed at the base of the Mace. Now, those amendments to the amendments will be seconded, and they will be seconded by the Deputy Manager of Opposition Business, the member for Page.