Business Statement

The House will be in adjournment next week. When the House resumes on 3 March the Government will make progress with the bills on the Order Paper. Wednesday will be a members’ day. In accordance with Standing Order 323(1), I take this opportunity to formally notify the House that Budget Day 2009 will be Thursday, 28 May 2009.

Now that the Government will have a week’s adjournment to recover from its 2 weeks of non-stop action, could I ask whether the order of business laid out on the Order Paper today will roughly reflect the likely order of business when the House resumes, and also whether it will now be the Government’s practice, following its initial dip into normality yesterday, to table bills before they are considered for first reading.

It seems that the Opposition members cannot be satisfied one way or the other. If we tell them what is going on, they moan about it; if we do not tell them what is going on, they moan about it. So the answer is—roughly—yes.