Business of the House

Next week the House will go into a 1-week adjournment. When the House resumes on Tuesday, 18 March, the business for that week will include the Appropriation (2001/02 Financial Review) Bill debate, which is a 4-hour debate, and progress on the Taxation (Annual Rates, Maori Organisations, Taxpayer Compliance and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, the Government Communications Security Bureau Bill, and the War Pensions Amendment Bill (No 2).

Noting the list of business that the Leader of the House has suggested will be progressed when we get back, and noting also that this Opposition party, the National Party, has talked—indeed, today—about facilitating Government business, to make extra time available to Parliament, I am wondering whether the Leader of the House might now consider the possibility of our having a debate on the situation in Iraq this afternoon at the conclusion of question time. That, of course, would be a matter of leave for the House, which I now seek.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Leave has been sought to have that debate. Is there any objection? There is.

Mr Speaker, you will recall that last Tuesday night this House ran out of work and rose at 9.30 p.m. Therefore I ask the Leader of the House whether we are going to see, for example, the Responsible Gambling Bill—which is way down the Order Paper—and the Māori Television Service Bill come up the Order Paper, and whether the longstanding guardianship review will materialise into some sort of bill before this House, as undertaken by the Attorney-General to the leadership of New Zealand First.

I am grateful for the cooperation of the House. On Tuesday an arrangement was arrived at that enabled the House to rise early after completing a very substantial amount of business that day. If the member is offering to organise support for our dealing with the Committee stage of the Responsible Gambling Bill in, say, about 2 hours, as happened with the Racing Bill, I would be extraordinarily grateful.

Further to the point that has been raised by the Leader of the House, can he—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: No. Please be seated. The procedure for the business statement is that there is entitlement for a statement to be made, and entitlement for the shadow leader of the House to make a response. It is not the custom then to carry on with large amounts of requests that can be easily made by way of a phone call.