Standing Orders Committee

The Hon. R.K. PEARCE (King—Minister for Emergency Services and Correctional Services, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (12:01): I move:

That the report of the committee be adopted.

Motion carried.

The Hon. R.K. PEARCE: I move:

That the alterations to the standing orders as adopted by this house be laid before the Governor by the Speaker for approval pursuant to section 55 of the Constitution Act 1934 with the request that Her Excellency approve the alterations to take effect from the commencement of the next parliament.

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (12:02): I commend the Standing Orders Committee report. What the adoption of this report does is change the standing orders, which is no small thing. Standing orders are very important in the way we run this place. They govern the conventions of this place. Some of them are ancient, some of them make no sense to anybody outside this place, but they are all very important. This does change the standing orders in some substantial ways, but it is not as dramatic as it sounds, because what it in fact does is give effect to what we have actually been doing for quite a while now, in some cases as far back as 2018 that some of these sessional orders have been in place. All this does is formalise them and make them the permanent or semi-permanent governing processes of this house.

Perhaps most important are the changes to the private members' motions part of the week that we all look forward to so much. The changes essentially do a couple of things. They get rid of the ridiculous race at the end of the year to populate the Notice Paper with motions and this sort of competition across the house to see who can populate and dominate the private members' motions agenda for every Wednesday of sitting.

The most substantial change probably, even though it is not that dramatic, is that notices of motion lapse after 12 sitting days. As I said, that has the effect of reducing that ridiculous race to the bottom that we have at the end of the year, but it also demands that there are a great deal of collegial conversations going on across the house, particularly between the Government Whip and the Opposition Whip.

Bearing in mind this may be my valedictory, I do want to place on the record my appreciation for the member for Unley and the collegial way we have worked over the last four years in not just these changes to the standing orders, which I think have improved the functioning of the house no end, particularly on Wednesday mornings, but also in organising all the matters of the house over the last four years. I want to place that on the record.

It does make several changes. I think that is probably the most interesting and important aspect. What it does not do, and I hope the Speaker hears this, is resolve the problem of the private members' bills—the problem from our side anyway. From our perspective there is a problem because the Speaker gets frustrated with us every Wednesday morning as we put bill after bill after bill. We clearly oppose most of those bills on the government side.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr ODENWALDER: We pass some of them, to be fair. We have passed some of them. The reforms that I think the Speaker has expressed that he wants have not found fruition, not particularly because the government does not want them but because I do not think we have found a way yet to make that fair to the opposition. I could stand up here every Wednesday morning and, although it would be fairly unconventional, I could move en bloc every Wednesday morning that all the private members' bills be postponed. I could just do that. I could postpone them until 2030, if I wanted to. But we would not do that (a) because it is unconventional but (b) because of the good and collegial relationship I have formed with the member for Unley. With those words, I want to commend this report to the house and commend the adoption of the changes to the standing orders.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI (Unley) (12:06): I, too, support this report and the recommendations that we are confirming today. The actions are not new and changes to standing orders are not new. This is probably the second time I have seen significant changes to the standing orders in my 20 years here. In my first year or two in this place, we did not start until 2pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then the 10.30am start on Thursday was a historical start. When the sessional orders that were first introduced by the Hon. John Gardner, the member for Unley—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Morialta, actually.

The Hon. D.G. PISONI: —Morialta, sorry; I am the member for Unley—by the member for Morialta, as Leader of Government Business, obviously Thursdays was a time when there was Executive Council and it seemed to make sense to move things around. Sessional orders were then brought in to change that 10.30 start to 11 o'clock, in exchange for the earlier start on the Wednesday.

That has run now under two governments, despite the fact that the Labor opposition at the time opposed that change. They saw the benefit of it in government and they continued with that sessional order for their full term, their first term here in government. I am pleased that that is now going to be a permanent change. I am disappointed that they did not take our lead, when we were in government, from 18 to 22 and have a 30-day period in which questions on notice must be answered by ministers. That was a sessional order that unfortunately this government did not continue with.

I will not repeat what the member for Elizabeth said but I will express how much I have enjoyed working with the member for Elizabeth as the Government Whip. He will be missed on his retirement and to this day I still cannot understand how he has been missed time and time again in being on the front bench in government. He was on the front bench in opposition and it is a loss to this parliament that he was not able to use those talents as a minister. I thank him for his leadership on this bipartisan issue and ensuring that it went from a concept of an idea, with the two of us discussing how we could make some changes to standing orders to make it more efficient.

Do not forget we are building on the historic changes that have happened in this place since the very early days of the House of Commons where the blood line was put in place to stop sword fights, for example, and the mace was introduced as a weapon for the Speaker to control unruly members of parliament. Of course, those two pieces have evolved now into members having to sit in their allocated space in order to speak, not just behind the blood line but in their allocated space—an improvement to the accessibility and the ability for members to be heard on behalf of their electorates. Of course, the mace is now no longer used as a weapon but as a symbol to remind everybody who is running the show, and of the authority of the Speaker.

Just as the evolution of that violent past has turned into a chamber, where very civil and fair debate can be conducted, these changes that we are adopting today into the standing orders will introduce another improvement that has identified issues that have evolved since the last change to standing orders. So I support them fully and again thank my colleague, the member for Elizabeth, for his cooperation, not just on this report but also, of course, as a fellow whip. He has done a great job in making this a much more pleasant place to attend every day. So, for that, I thank him.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta) (12:11): I will be very brief. The member for Unley said most of what I want to say, but I do want to add my recognition of the member for Elizabeth as the best Labor Whip that I have experienced in the 16 years I have been in here. In times when he has potentially had to undertake that which his party has asked him, he has shown courtesy, goodwill and good faith, and he has always had the good grace at least to look a little bit awkward about it.

But seriously, what we are doing here today is actually relatively substantial. There have been a few times when the standing orders have been updated without bipartisan support, and it usually works out okay: we are still here and we are doing fine, and the people in South Australia are well served by this parliament. If there is going to be a difference of opinion between the sides, it is always much better put into a sessional order than a standing order. The process for this has been outstanding.

Things have been trialled in sessional orders; they have been supported by both sides. The 90-second statements have been an innovation quite recently. There was the matter that the member for Elizabeth talked about. The member for Unley and the member for Elizabeth worked together and have developed something that improves the functioning of this parliament, and the collegiality between the sides that is forced upon the whips, and that is going to have some positive outcomes.

There was the matter that the member for Unley talked about, which we put in place in 2018, to improve the flow of the week. Wednesday mornings for private members means that, if the government has business that must be transacted, and they know that then they would have a certain amount of time on Thursday that that can still be done, it removes what used to be unnecessary late-night sittings on Wednesday nights as a regular occurrence.

Now, there are some 3½ hours of government business available on Thursday, while still allowing the country members to get home on Thursday night. In the past, there was literally only that time between grieves and the end of the day. Country members were often stuck here late on a Thursday night and, indeed, we were often having government business late into a Wednesday night to address the issue on Thursday.

These matters may be small in some ways, but it costs a lot of money to keep this building going after 6 o'clock on a Thursday, and that used to happen a lot more unnecessarily. It also delivers, I think, better parliamentary practice when people are behaving in a more collegial fashion. So I think that has been a good thing too, and I commend the motion to the house.

Motion carried.