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

Mr Speaker, I have a question for you, and it will have a bearing on future question times. It goes to the ruling today with respect to coalition agreements. I refer to page 554 of Practice, where it goes through the different lists of questions that have ordinarily been ruled out of order and cites, as an example of arrangements between parties, 'coalition agreements on ministerial appointments'. Up until today, certainly as far as Practice would indicate, those agreements have not been barred to the extent that they go to policy. If we end up in the situation for the rest of the week or, indeed, the term where a key reason for a major policy of international concern with respect to net zero by 2050 can't be asked about, that would in fact be, on the face of it, quite a new precedent, because the question from the Leader of the Opposition today didn't go in any way to the ministerial appointments.

I simply raise that now because I think this is inevitably going to come up. If the intention today was to make a new ruling, then it was to make a new ruling. If it was simply to reflect on what was already in Practice, then I would not want to see a situation where the House was held back from being able to ask about a major policy topic of national and international concern.

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