Points of Order — House—Procedures

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I need to ask you some questions that relate to the procedures of the House. I ask you to turn your attention to the current Order Paper, which has some 13 Government items on it. We note that the Opposition, by and large, supports about seven of those, and that five cannot be progressed because of coalition difficulties, which makes the Order Paper, in fact, very, very short indeed. I wonder, Madam Speaker, whether you could tell us whether it would be possible for the Government to use Standing Order 72 to suspend a large part of the Order Paper next week, in order to progress to the next item of business—which conveniently happens to be the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill. That would give the House enough time to pass that bill—and would therefore take away all the difficulties that the current Government has in holding its numbers together on that bill—before Easter.

That is a novel idea; I thank the member for his suggestion. But in order to do that—and the member will note that I have already added an item to the Order Paper, as the Speaker outlined just this afternoon—one would have to move sequentially that each of the bills come after member’s order of the day No. 1, the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill. Of course, the numbers would have to be available for those motions to be put, as well. I am sure the member has thought that through. I am flattered by his suggestion to the media that for the last year I have managed the House’s business so rapidly entirely in order to prepare for the Crimes (Substitution of Section 59) Amendment Bill next Wednesday, but I must admit that my degree of perspicacity is not as large nor as long-range as that.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I have a new point of order—

💬 Madam SPEAKER: Have you? Then, does Gerry Brownlee want to speak further to the point of order he raised?

Yes, Madam Speaker. I, in fact, asked you to consider whether such a move was possible. Although Michael Cullen may claim he has not thought of it, I doubt that. I note that although the Government would claim that it has plenty on the Order Paper, that raises the question of why on earth the House will spend time today in discussing such a self-congratulatory motion as that in Government notice of motion No. 1 on the Order Paper, and also why the Government is so bereft of ideas that it has to go to the likes of Lynne Pillay in order to fill out the Order Paper.

I thank the member for raising this issue earlier on. Of course, debating Government notice of motion No. 1 will give us a chance to find out whether National has done another massive flip-flop, or whether it still opposes lifting 70 percent of the New Zealand kids who are below the poverty line out of poverty.

💬 Madam SPEAKER: As the member who raised the point of order knows, Speakers do not rule on hypothetical questions relating to the Standing Orders. However, I would note that the Standing Orders can always be suspended under Standing Order 4.

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