Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In prefacing the question can I draw your attention to standing order 160, which reads:

The House may only amend a House bill which has been returned from the Senate if its further amendment is relevant to or consequent on the Senate amendments or requests for amendments.

Mr Speaker, not long before question time today, the House received a message from the Senate returning the Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2005. The Senate was seeking the House’s concurrence to amendments it had made. The Treasurer, on behalf of the government, moved that some of those amendments be accepted and some of them be rejected and subsequently moved amendments to that bill. I raised the issue of standing order 160 at the time, challenging whether those amendments were within the scope of the bill. Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie ruled that they were. I suggest that he had little choice, given the late notice that we given of the amendments.

Mr Speaker, can I ask you to review that ruling, particularly on government amendments (23), (24) and (25) to the Trade Practices Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2005, to determine whether, given the limited amount of time both the clerks and Mr Deputy Speaker Wilkie were given to consider the amendments—obviously you need to know the very nature of the amendments to know whether they comply with standing order 160—and, if you find that they were not within the scope of the bill as amended by the Senate, report to the House on the consequences of the amendments being outside that scope?

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hunter, but I remind him that the chair can only seek advice from the minister in charge about the amendments proposed by the government or related to consequential Senate amendments. I understand that the First Parliamentary Counsel provided advice. It is not a matter that the chair can now revisit. It is something that could be pursued in the Senate.