Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Manager of Opposition Business, I'm going to take that as a point of order on relevance, and the Deputy Prime Minister is 23 seconds into the answer. Before I call him back to the dispatch box—just put your seatbelt on for a tick! The nature of questions like this which are borderline, very borderline, where they're asking about political parties and friends and all the rest of it, certainly mean for me there is a much wider tolerance. The question could easily have been ruled out of order. I notice the Manager of Opposition Business shaking his head. If I applied the standing orders, I think I could have ruled it out five different ways, okay? And I won't go through them all now. So I do allow a lot more latitude, and, as I've said, we will address this at a later point. When it comes to questions and answers, I have to say—and I just give fair warning now—questions that are essentially political attack statements create a proportionate response, and, if the House wants to fix that, I'm more than happy to help, but it'll mean the questions will be very specific and the answers will be much shorter. But, on this question, the Deputy Prime Minister is being relevant to it—in fact, even re-reading it now, as I said, he's entitled to be answering in the way he is.

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