Speaker’s Rulings — End of Life Choice Bill—Speeches

A number of members have contacted me in my office with regard to the End of Life Choice Bill, and I thought while all members are here it would be appropriate to indicate to them the basis on which I will be granting calls.

I’m going to start off by saying that, in the end, the discretion is mine and will be applied strictly and without argument. Factors which I will take into account are whether or not members have had previous calls on the debate—and this is in no particular order—seniority of members, the time they spent on the Justice Committee, their willingness to sit through the debate and to listen to other members, and the number of times they have attempted to take the call. I will attempt to get some balance—although I don’t know the views of all members—around sides of the debate, for and against. I will attempt to get some balance around the House, as far as parties are concerned. I will also attempt to give people of a variety of religious beliefs and from different ethnic backgrounds the opportunity to state cases on behalf of their religious or ethnic communities. There will be eight 10-minute speeches and 12 five-minute speeches—not necessarily in that order, but it is my intention to start with the 10-minute speeches. If people who would like to have a call early in the debate but only want five minutes indicate that to me by way of a note, that might give them a slightly better chance than they would have on all of the other criteria to get a call. Would some honourable member care to move that the House—

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, I was waiting for you to sit down before I leapt to my feet. Look, thank you for your indication of how you intend to make sure the House gets through what is a very contentious and quite difficult bill for many people, but I’m just wondering: have you had any indication as to whether there might be any amendments to the second reading motion at this early stage?

I am not aware of anything being tabled; no one has given one to me.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Again, thank you for the clarification. I just wanted to check, on your point about trying to get a balance between people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, if you would include people who do not hold a religious belief as one of the religious beliefs that would be represented in that category?

Absolutely.