Points of Order — Speaker’s Rulings—Oral Questions

Thank you, Mr Speaker. There’s a trend that I’ve been observing over the last wee while that I’d like to bring to your attention and invite some consideration of. It was evident in the last question, but I make my points in a general sense, not necessarily specific to that question. There are two things that I’m considering here: Speaker’s ruling 205/4 that indicates that Ministers should not bring parties not involved in the question into their answer, and also the rules around footage in the House.

Now, all parties use footage from question time and the House on social media, but there is a requirement that when doing so, it accurately reflects what occurs in the House. When a Minister uses a response to a question from one party that says, “those members on the other side of the House”, whilst being a legitimate contribution in a debate in question time, when presented on social media, it may give the impression that all parties are of that view. In this particular instance, I would argue that the responses to the Minister, if portrayed in isolation, would be an inaccurate reflection of the views of the members that make up the Opposition.

I just request that you consider that and whether some requirements be imposed that when Ministers are responding to a particular party, they be required to be specific in that response so that some potentially unintended misrepresentations aren’t made later.

Well, look, I thank the member for that. Strictly speaking, the answers should be presented to the Speaker for the House. It is certainly a breach of the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings to misuse footage from the House to convey anything other than what factually happened in the House, so I’ll take a look at that. If the member has something specifically for me to look at, I’d like to do that, because in the age of raging misinformation, members of Parliament contributing to that would be quite unacceptable.