Thursday, 11 September 2025
Business of the house
Standing and sessional orders
Please do not quote
Proof only
Standing and sessional orders
That, effective from 13 October 2025, this house:
(a) adopts the proposed amendments to standing and sessional orders as detailed in appendix B as recommended by the Standing Orders Committee’s interim report 2 on the inquiry into including sessional orders and ongoing resolutions in the standing orders, June 2025; and
(b) deletes existing standing order 52.
James NEWBURY (Brighton) (11:22): Just for the house’s assistance: this notice of motion, moved on behalf the Leader of the House, who is not here, seeks that the proposed amendments to the standing and sessional orders, as detailed in the interim report, be incorporated into the standing orders. It is an important issue. It is one that we as the Standing Orders Committee worked on for some time. I do acknowledge the Deputy Speaker. The Deputy Speaker took a leadership role in working through these issues. It would be fair to say that the house considering changes to the standing orders is always a difficult thing, and when he was given the job of leading a subcommittee to work on changes to the standing orders, I am sure that he probably thought to himself, ‘How are we going to get any agreement on anything?’ But of course we did, because people came to the discussion with goodness of mind in relation to the standing orders. The Deputy Speaker has just come back into the chamber and missed all the nice things I said about him. You will have to review it, Deputy Speaker.
The committee worked hard and did come to agreement on a number of items, and primarily in this case that we are dealing with today they are around incorporating petitions into the standing orders. I do think it is worth noting that, though on this issue there was a spirit of bipartisanship and a positive outcome, there have been a number of other changes to the practices of this place that did not go through the same process. It is worth noting that the Leader of the House made changes with regard to the scheduling of notices of motion without any consultation with the other side of the chamber. There was no discussion, though there was a formal process in place through the Standing Orders Committee that could have enabled her to facilitate discussion should she have had the goodwill. She clearly did not. Also, the Speaker has made changes in relation to the way that the opposition can raise concerns about when outstanding matters are dealt with, and we see that outstanding matters can no longer be asked about at the end of question time, at the start of the constituency questions section. It now is a requirement that they be asked about at the end of constituency questions.
I have said in this chamber many times that my view is that it only disadvantages an opposition and hides the ministry’s lack of responsiveness, and we have seen an incredible lack of responsiveness in relation to these matters. Only today, after a commitment was given that a number of outstanding matters would be answered on Tuesday – and frankly, when I asked about those matters on Tuesday I felt there was almost a personal push off for having raised them – those matters still have not been answered. The house was advised they had been, which clearly was not the case, and they would be by the end of the day, which clearly has still not been the case. I was given almost a push off for having raised them.
I use the outstanding matters issue and also the notice of motion issue by way of examples to show the difference with the matters that have been tabled today by way of this motion, in terms of what has been reached on the standing orders and the incorporation of a matter like petitions into the standing orders, which we reached in a bipartisan way through robust conversation, very important conversation, between ourselves, the coalition; the Greens and the government. I repeat that I am sure the Deputy Speaker, on taking the job of managing that conversation, probably thought, ‘How are we going to reach a point where we get to achieving that one item can be incorporated into the standing orders?’ But we did, and we are here today to say so.
I would say, in relation to those other two examples that I have just given, that it shows that with some kind of good spirit you can reach outcomes that ensure that the house works smoothly but also make sure the house works in the way that Victorians would expect. I would hope that when the Leader of the House seeks to make changes without any conversation or consultation, perhaps wiser heads around the Leader of the House could provide her some guidance and, I suppose, encouragement to appeal to her better nature, if it is there, as opposed to ramming things through without that good spirit. Today we can see that we will not be opposing the matter we are considering now and hope that in the future, on other matters in relation to the standing and sessional orders, we can do so in a similar way, with the good spirit of this house and on behalf of all Victorians.
Motion agreed to.