Parliamentary Procedure

STANDING AND SESSIONAL ORDERS

The SPEAKER (14:00): Yesterday the member for MacKillop questioned the authority of the Chair to require the member to withdraw from the chamber. The member questioned the validity of the sessional orders adopted by the house on 29 February relating to both the Speaker's authority to require a disorderly member to withdraw from the chamber for up to one hour and, presumably, given the nature of the member's complaint, the other sessional order adopted that day limiting the time for a minister's answer to a question without notice to four minutes.

If the member's complaint can be sustained then it calls into question the proceedings of the house in relation to its current sitting times, the conduct of private members' business, the delivery and receipt of messages between the houses, and the Citizen's Right of Reply provisions and any other sessional order adopted by the house. The sessional orders under which the house currently operates are adopted by way of the suspension of standing orders pursuant to standing orders 398 and 400. Standing order 398 makes specific mention of both standing and sessional orders.

Section 55 of the current Constitution Act reflects that practice and is consistent with Blackmore's 1885 advice that the Governor's approval is required for standing rules and orders. A more contemporary authority, the House of Representatives Practice (4th Edition), at page 186 says:

The House has often adopted sessional orders, which are temporary standing orders or temporary changes to standing orders, in order, for example, to enable experimentation with a new procedure or arrangement before a permanent change is made to the standing orders.

I believe the house can have confidence in the validity of these and previous sessional orders, but as always the Chair will take the direction of the house should it consider that further advice is wanted. I also have to thank the clerks for the considerable amount of work that they have put into this. I would also remind the member for MacKillop that today it could be quite within my justification to further name you for a further three days as a previous Speaker may have done. However, I will be lenient at this stage.