Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very important matter of public importance for debate today. It comes out of the extraordinary frustration that my colleagues on this side of the House feel, I know that the public feel, and I would be very surprised if members of the Labor Party did not also feel, about the performance of this government in terms of question time and the handling of matters in this House. Mr Speaker, as you said in the House today:

The failure has been of the House not to address the problems that people feel concerned about.

Today I wish to go to some of those problems and to the reform agenda that the opposition has placed on the record. I have written to the Leader of the House and to the Procedure Committee. I would expect a sensible response from the Leader of the House, and I would also expect that the Procedure Committee, which can refer matters to itself, would seriously look at the reform agenda that the opposition has put forward covering matters as far reaching as a backbench question time specifically for backbenchers to ask ministers about issues in their local electorate, a take note session after question time, and of course time limits for answers, which would come as an enormous relief to everybody in the chamber. I think I could even speak for the members of the government—it would come as a great relief to them if there were limits on the Prime Minister in particular. I think they would be popping champagne corks in the caucus if the government actually adopted the opposition’s proposals for reform of the parliamentary system.

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