Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Speaker, congratulations on the role that you have achieved today. This day in parliament, probably more than any other, functions like a first day back at school. People have remarked today about this being reminiscent of the Harry Potter novel in which they all returned to Hogwarts and found that Dumbledore was gone and Dolores Umbridge was in charge of the school.

We have a situation where, for everything that has been said by those opposite about the commitment to the new parliament, a number of very specific commitments to the new parliament were made. Page 167 of House of Representatives Practice refers to the fact that the Speaker is ordinarily nominated by a private member and not by the executive, and certainly not by the Prime Minister. In terms of providing the sort of nonpartisan role the Speaker provides, the opposition does look forward to the commitments made before the election being kept, including that there will be an independent Speaker who will not attend party-room meetings.

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