Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That standing order 1 be amended to read as follows:

1 Maximum speaking times (addition to existing subjects, as follows)

This amendment to standing order 1—maximum speaking times, creates programming of government business as a type of motion. To ensure the smooth running of the House and timely passage of the government's agenda it has often been necessary to limit debate on certain legislation. Both governments, Labor and coalition, have done this over many years. Where possible, of course, it is my preference to use debate management motions to do this rather than the guillotine. This means that members on both sides are aware that debate will be limited in advance of it happening.

This amendment creates debate management motions as a type of motion and limits debate on that to 25 minutes in total, with 15 minutes for the mover, 10 minutes for the member next speaking and five minutes for any other member. It is very similar to the suspension of standing orders provisions that currently exist. This limits the time taken in the House on such debate management routine motions to ensure that the limited government business time is taken up with debate about the content of legislation, not just debating how such legislation will be debated.

To explain this in layman's terms: currently a debate management motion needs to be moved in the House as a suspension of standing orders, debate is held about that and then the debate is held about the debate management motion, which is an open-ended debate and can obviously take a substantial amount of time. This motion will allow the debate management motion to be treated as though it were a suspension of standing orders in itself. There will be a 25-minute debate, the House will decide whether it supports it and then the debate on legislation will ensue as prescribed by the debate management motion.

Question agreed to.