Business Statement

When the House resumes on 18 May, the Government will look to progress the Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill, the Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Bill, and a range of first readings on the Order Paper. The Budget will be read on Thursday, 20 May.

I want to make a couple of inquiries of the Leader of the House about the Budget—obviously, not its contents, but issues of process. The first item is whether the Government intends to repeat the practice last year, which was very helpful to members, whereby once the Minister of Finance commences reading the Budget speech, the Budget documents are made available for members to look at and follow through as the Budget speech is being read. The second item is whether members should prepare for an extra sitting as a result of the Budget, either on Thursday evening or on Friday.

On the first point, yes, it is our intention that the good practice of making sure that copies of the Budget documents are rapidly made available to members is continued. It was a good process last year. It is part of the new and open way in which this Government likes to operate. We are setting new and very high parliamentary standards for the conduct of public business. As for the member’s concern about when he may be able to head home in order to reconnect with Teddy, he will just have to wait until the day.