Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, in response to Senator Brown, can I say that as Chair of the Procedure Committee this was discussed at the time of the change to the committee system that we have today. One of the things that was also discussed was that there had been a proliferation of select committees under the old system and we did not want that to remain. It was always agreed amongst members on the Procedure Committee that there should be up to three select committees that were allowed to keep going at any one time.