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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 897 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

answering of each supplementary question shall not exceed one minute.

5. That Standing Order 160 be amended as follows:

Omit the words "in alphabetical order" substitute ", with the first call being in alphabetical order, and every alternate call being called in reverse alphabetical order,".

I will speak to both Mr Moore's motion and my amendment. As I indicated before, I will be perfectly happy in a sense if the whole motion is rejected by this Assembly, including my amendment, because I think it should be. I think Mr Moore's motion should be rejected. As I said, for 12 years we have not required it. One has to ask: why does the government believe that we require it now?

We require it now because the government lost a vote, so the message is clear that the standing orders of the Assembly are fine as long as they allow the government to win votes. The minute they lose one, we have to amend them so that that will never happen again. In fact, it was not the standing orders that resulted in their losing the vote on the last sitting date; it was the merits of the case and the fact that one member was absent. They are now seeking to remake history by changing the standing orders so that that can never happen again. If a member who might support the government on an issue happens to be absent on any given day, we have to suspend the standing orders to make sure that the government does not lose the vote. That is the message behind what Mr Moore is doing day. I repeat, Mr Speaker, that for 12 years we have not needed it. What has changed? I think that is the question that people need to turn their minds to during this debate.

In connection with my own amendment, Mr Speaker, the circumstances of the last sitting day were aggravated by the members of the government and their abuse of the standing orders in terms of answering questions. There has been a move in the past to impose the same sorts of time limitations on ministers and on people asking questions as apply in the House of Representatives and the Senate, but that has not succeeded. I think that the events of the last sitting day clearly demonstrate that some members of this place-in fact, perhaps even a majority-are fed up with the government's abuse of the standing orders in this matter.

A simple solution is to adopt the specifications there. Mr Moore says they have a sin bin. They also have standing orders that impose time limits on both the asking of questions and the answering of them and, had we had those standing orders in place two weeks ago, there would not have been the aggravation caused by Mr Moore, who had already spent 15 minutes answering a question and was then being invited to repeat his whole answer. That is what led to the events of the other day; the frustration at the government's total disregard and abuse of the standing orders. If Mr Moore is keen to adopt the House of Representatives practice and have a sin bin for an hour, let us also remove the cause of the frustration and have the same time limits imposed on asking and answering questions as the House of Representatives and the Senate.

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