Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Mr Speaker, the Committee has voted that you be recalled to determine whether or not the ruling that I made was, in fact, the correct one. The Committee was debating the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I put a closure motion to the Committee on the debate. The closure motion was accepted. The vote on the clauses, the parts, and the schedules was agreed to. I then proceeded to call the Minister to put the motion to divide the bill, and the question was raised whether or not that was covered in the closure motion. I ruled that it was. There was a question about that and you have been asked to determine whether, in fact, that is the case.

I think the Chairman has summarised it absolutely clearly. It is a very simple question, and that is when a closure motion has been called for and passed on the preliminary clauses and the parts of the bill—voted on; that has been completed—obviously the Committee moves immediately, as its next item, to the Minister moving a motion. We had at that stage passed the time for the reporting and, therefore, it is my submission that that is a motion for the next sitting day.

Thank you. I am going to seek some advice on this. My understanding is that it has been agreed by leave that the bill be taken as one question. With that in mind, when the vote starts, it is also to be—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Can I interrupt?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The Hon Trevor Mallard.

Sorry, the Chairman made it absolutely clear to the Committee that what had been agreed was that the parts and the preliminary clauses would be taken as one question and the votes on those would be taken as one question. He stated that clearly to the Committee as part of an earlier discussion. He did not include in his summary any further motion by the Minister. I also want to make it absolutely clear that in the motion for leave that the Committee agreed to, the Minister’s motion, which could have been included in that leave and probably would have been accepted, was not included in what the Committee agreed to.

I thank the member. I will just reiterate what I said to start with, and that was that it was agreed by leave that all parts and clauses would be taken as one question—we agreed on that—and the vote was put on that. The question that arises is when the Minister then had to divide the bill. At that stage, if I am hearing what you are saying, you think that is outside the ambit of the original intention—that is as you see it. Well, the convention has always been that when you have a bill that needs to be divided, it immediately follows the vote—it immediately follows the vote. That was, as I understand it from the Chairperson, exactly what happened. So if we were to take this in sequence, the vote was put, the Minister immediately then came forward and moved the motion about dividing the bill, and that is the proper thing to do as that is the sequence it follows. The question that then arises, however, is once that is done it actually could be regarded as a debatable motion, and I think that is the area with a question mark at this stage. I am just going to seek some further advice.

The convention is, and I will just reiterate the point that I have made, that immediately following the vote where a dividing of the bill were to follow, it is a debatable motion, as I mentioned earlier on. Although that has been a convention, by concluding the debate now it actually stops members from participating in a further debate. So my ruling is that we have to move back into Committee and the Chairperson must report progress.

In Committee

Debate resumed.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Taxation (International Investment and Remedial Matters) Bill with amendment and progress on the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 10.05 p.m.