Points of Order — Urgent Debates—Grounds for Acceptance

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise to David Seymour for slightly interrupting his kicking off this debate. My point of order is not to do with that. It is do with the ruling that you made on Mr Bishop’s application.

Whilst I understand you’ve ruled that the debate should not be held today, and I understand your reasons for doing so, your indication that in a different set of circumstances a debate might be held raises some concern in that Mr Bishop’s application relates to a particular individual. There are issues of natural justice when Parliament is being asked to scrutinise the actions of one individual member of the public, and I’d ask you to re-think whether such an application in the future would be treated consistently with the ruling that you had indicated it might do in a different set of circumstances.

That individual would not be part of the debate. They would not have the ability to—the very issue of the statements they have made are ultimately going to be a large part of the subject of the debate, and there are other investigations ongoing, including whether or not the person concerned may be subject to other forms of sanction for those actions. Therefore, that would seem to me to be quite unwise for the Parliament to, effectively, be acting as judge and jury regarding that particular individual.

Speaking to the point of order—

💬 SPEAKER: If the member thinks he can add to it, yep.

Well, I was going to make the point that my application is quite specific around the contextual circumstances to do with case B. It is not a litigation of what happened with case B. And the second point I’d make is that the Prime Minister, under privilege in question time, accused case B of lying. So, if there is anyone litigating exactly what case B did or didn’t do, it is the Government itself.