Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I have a question for you. I want to ask you about your interpretation of standing order 104 today and to point out that standing order 104 requires that an answer be relevant to the question. Although we have seen many times rulings by you and previous speakers that on a specific question on a particular issue of government policy it is adequate to respond in general terms, in this instance on a question regarding government advertising—which, incidentally, referred to a particular area of government policy—you ruled that it was in order for the Prime Minister to respond purely on that general area of government policy. That seems to me to be a widening of the scope of relevance based on the interpretation that you put forward. It seems to me that the crucial words in that standing order are that it must be relevant to the question. So I would ask you, Mr Speaker, does this mean that in your mind there has been a broadening or loosening of the application of standing order 104—that in effect all we are able to do as opposition members is to ask headings and to allow the government to respond in any way they like?

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

The member for Melbourne has made his point. I refer the member for Melbourne to the House of Representatives Practice, which I think makes quite clear how successive speakers have handled interpretation of standing order 104.