Points of Order — Questions for Oral Answer—Publishing

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to raise an important matter with you relating to the fact that the Clerk’s Office has not published questions for today in the normal fashion. Members will be aware that there was some contention as to whether the House would be in a position to begin a new sitting day at 2 o’clock, which would therefore necessitate question time. The practice in the past has always been for questions to be received in the normal manner so that Ministers can prepare their answers and members their supplementary questions and, therefore, be prepared for question time, whether or not the House completes urgency.

Today the questions have not been published. I am told that they have not been forwarded to Ministers’ offices, and the Clerk’s Office advises that it has been instructed—presumably by your office, Mr Speaker—not to distribute the questions. It seems to me that that raises a rather interesting question of whether the Clerk’s Office has had some sort of private communication from the Leader of the House about the Government’s intentions with regard to the urgency motion.

I put it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Office of the Speaker and the Clerk’s Office should stand above and beyond the political manipulations of the Leader of the House and well away from any shabby deals that the Government has done with the minor parties that prop it up in the Chamber. It seems to me that it would have been proper for the Clerk’s Office to distribute questions in the normal way and to act in every way in the normal fashion, and to not take any political advice from the Leader of the House or anyone else.

It is pretty obvious to members now that the Leader of the House has had to abandon his wish to have question time today, and that he will have to abandon the notice of motion I know he wanted the House to address. That is quite a substantial victory for Opposition parties. But I ask for your assurance that, in future, we will not have political judgments being passed through to the Clerk’s Office or the Speaker’s Office and that the machinery of this House, particularly as it relates to questions and the urgency motion, will operate above and beyond those sorts of political considerations.

I just wanted to comment on the remarks made about so-called shonky deals done with the support partners of Labour, and also on the reference to the machinery of the House. The House does have a machinery for dealing with this question. It is called the Business Committee. This matter was raised at the Business Committee—not this week’s Business Committee, but last week’s Business Committee.

Opposition parties have had about 8 days’ notice to raise the matter of whether question time should occur and when it should occur. They have made no representations in that regard, at all, so I think it is actually quite perverse of them to get up and raise a point of order on the matter today.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank Mr Copeland for making that comment. I note the point raised by Mr McCully. I have no knowledge of the issues you raise, at all; nor should I have any knowledge, because I proceed exactly as I should. As far as I am concerned, I have an urgency motion that does not allow for or show any question time, at all. Until that is changed through other mechanisms, I shall proceed along those lines.

I am informed that questions are not distributed beforehand. They have been on one occasion, by mistake, and I guess that is what is happening. But to get more information I suggest that, perhaps, the question should be raised with Madam Speaker.

I do not want to put you in a difficult position either, but I ask that you protect the rights of the Opposition parties in this matter and, after making due inquiry, give us an assurance that the machinery of the Clerk’s Office and the House will operate free from any sort of political interference by the Leader of the House—ably assisted, no doubt, by Mr Copeland and his cronies. [Interruption]

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I do not need any rebuttal of that remark. I thank Mr McCully; we shall proceed as though that point was never raised.