Page 3121 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Members interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Order members! Can we do this without interjection please.
Mr Coe interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Coe.
MR SMYTH: They are entirely different propositions, and your ruling is entirely accurate and the way that you have made it is entirely appropriate. If you simply go to the dictionary and you look up the word “capacity”, it says “the volume”—cubic contents, the volume. So the question was about how many students we can fit into a specific school and what is the capacity of the entire school system. It is something that Mr Doszpot has been looking for for some time.
When you look up “enrolment” it simply says “to enlist”. So enrolment is about the number of students who might want to be somewhere as opposed to the capacity of schools to hold a number of students. In that way you have two entirely different concepts. If the member cannot get his questions right and if the member cannot recall what has been asked, for the government to hide their embarrassment by trying to move dissent from your ruling, when your ruling is entirely accurate, is a disgrace. I think if those opposite think there are problems with the way you are running the house, as Mr Coe has said the entirely appropriate way to do this is to raise the matter in procedures or to go and have a conversation with yourself.
This morning, Madam Speaker, you came back to this place, as is appropriate first thing, and apologised to Mr Corbell for a ruling you made that you thought you might have overstepped the mark on. I do not think in all my time here I have heard a Speaker do that. I am happy to be corrected—Mr Corbell has been here a bit longer than I have—if anyone can remember when a Speaker has come back and said, “Look, I took on board what you said and had a think about it. Yes, maybe I got it wrong.” I think that is the sign of a Speaker who understands the function of the Speaker in this place. I cannot imagine that being Speaker is easy on days like today, let alone weeks like this week.
But it is up to the Speaker to keep all of us in line. Again, earlier in the week, having listened to a debate, you came down here and you said, “Members, you need to lift your game,” and you quoted from House of Representatives Practice. You can be a hands-off Speaker; you can be a hands-on Speaker. I think you made it quite clear when you took up the position of Speaker in this place the way that you attempt to run the house to facilitate debate. I think that you have been quite close to the mark and keeping to the standard that you set. I think it is admirable that you set the standard and that you are willing to abide by it.
But it is not your fault if members do not track what has been asked in a question and what has been answered in a question. These questions are about the failure of the minister to understand the capacity of the school system that she is responsible for, her failure to answer accurately in the estimates through either questions live in the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video