Wednesday, 5 March 2025

Motions

Sessional orders

Debate resumed.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:02): I rise to make a contribution on the motion put forward by Mr Davis on amending the existing sessional orders – sessional orders that, I am quick to remind the chamber, were originally introduced by the member back in 2023. This is now the third time that those opposite have brought up a debate in this chamber about sessional orders. The government gave a very clear warning to the opposition then, and it will make it clear again now that we should not be moving changes to sessional orders on the fly. It has the potential to disrupt the proceedings of the chamber and create chaos for everybody, and that is exactly what has happened.

When this motion was last debated in the Council in its original form, we on this side of the chamber raised certain questions and concerns about the outcomes of the motion. That motion in effect introduced restrictions to the debates. A limitation to two motions was introduced for Wednesdays, and further motions which exceeded this limit were shuffled onto subsequent days to be debated. In the third and latest instalment of the same sessional orders debates on government and non-government matters are being divided up between different days.

The argument for this, along with the original time restrictions of up to 5 minutes per member, which essentially restricted the extent to which members may make their views or concerns known, was for the purposes of succinctness. Succinctness may sound perfectly well and good, but in practice we need to look at the actual impacts of these restrictions. I believe some of my colleagues – that being Mr Galea and Mr Batchelor – made several observations about the implications of moving those sessional orders and aired some concerns back when the motion was first moved by Mr Davis. For example, the 20-minute restriction that is in place for some motions was noted to potentially stifle competitive debate in this chamber.

It would be limited to just 5 minutes per member. Owing to the total duration of 20 minutes, that would mean a maximum of four speakers to debate it if their whole 5 minutes was used. In fact if we wanted every member in this chamber to raise a point or statement on a matter relating to the issue being discussed, each member would be left with 30 seconds or less. Thirty seconds is just not good enough. Each region of the Legislative Council represents 500,000 constituents, over four times the size of a federal electorate, all of whom we represent in this chamber. Thirty seconds is nowhere near adequate to reflect their views, questions and concerns over certain matters.

Another point I would like to touch on, which was raised in the first debate all those months ago, is the role of the committee in drafting these procedural matters. There are around 272 standing orders determining the procedure of this chamber. Any changes made to these orders are usually a matter for the Procedure Committee. That committee is tasked with the review of standing orders on a periodic basis, with the last review wrapping up just a few weeks back. Sessional orders, for all intents and purposes, act as an operational procedure for this place alongside the standing orders until the next session of Parliament is called, which will be late in 2026, yet the original draft of the sessional orders was not brought before the chamber from the Procedure Committee, which had not reviewed this in a meaningful way back in 2023. This is most likely why the opposition has had to drag it out into this chamber now three times, each time tweaking it ever so slightly.

It is further bizarre to see that no-one is willing to support the referral of this matter to the Procedure Committee. In that environment maybe some of the issues now being discussed on the floor could be fleshed out and debated. That way perhaps the opposition would not be in this current predicament of reintroducing a change to the sessional orders for a third time. While sessional orders may not carry from one term of Parliament to the next, they are nonetheless a critical piece of how this place operates on a day-to-day basis, with the same gravity as the standing orders. Something like that I believe should derive from the committee. After all, it is something which will have impact, quite severely it seems, on the operation of this place and the management of members’ motions. There ought to be a process by which members can deliberate and discuss these matters and decide whether or not these changes will provide meaningful value to the standing orders or sessional orders, but that has not happened. Frankly, a motion which has not gone through the scrutiny of that committee and has not come through the recommendation of anyone besides Mr Davis himself and those opposite should be rejected on that basis alone.

We cannot get into the habit in this place of changing up the sessional orders every so often when the proceedings are not unfolding exactly how we would like them to. After all, under this model, which the opposition has now sought to amend three times, may need to be amended again in the future. We are more than happy on this side of the house to debate the fine details of the opposition’s errors every Wednesday, but unfortunately this is not the Allan Labor government’s top priority. That would be reserved for building and investing in schools across Victoria or building up our health services, building critical transport infrastructure and building more homes. But if the opposition wants to spend their day of non-government business flip-flopping on motions that they cannot seem to get the language right for, well, that is their call. We are focused on what matters to Victorians on the ground, not cleaning up the opposition’s mistakes when they refuse the help of the Procedure Committee. The changes now being moved are as follows:

a maximum of two motions under this Sessional Order may be –

moved by non-government members and debated each Wednesday;

moved by government members and debated on Tuesday and Thursday …

The motion further reads that:

a motion proposed to be debated under this sessional order will take precedence on –

Tuesday and Thursday at the time prescribed for government business;

Wednesday at the time prescribed for short form documents motions …

What this effectively spells out is that the member has realised his original orders have backfired. Possibly, though I cannot know for certain, he was hoping that there may be more time for him to hear non-government motions in this chamber, but what has happened instead is that now we have a bottleneck of debate motions. Instead of taking a step back and reflecting, we now have a new amendment which will tighten the screws even further. It is still quite unclear how this will solve any of the issues that arise from the existing arrangements, and it may possibly exacerbate them.

When this was originally moved it was done to keep those matters as succinct as possible. Now they are dragging them out. Further, those opposite waste more and more time trying to fix their own mistakes. Instead of realising that perhaps something went wrong, they have now decided to tighten the screws further, which would mean more delays, more backlogs. Every member of this chamber is interested in ensuring that debate runs smoothly and is timely and that those who wish to make a contribution have the opportunity. This, however, is not how we achieve that. This does not allow for more debate by members nor for more motions to be heard in this chamber. As I said before, these matters are better served being debated in the confines of the Procedure Committee rather than wasting valuable time on the floor. This is why the Allan Labor government maintains its opposition to the motion without it being referred to the Procedure Committee.

I would like to raise another concern of note with these changes, that being the impact on the length of these days. We already know that in the first two instances those opposite have messed up the execution of this change and that has caused unnecessary pressures and waste in our procedures. Consider the committees that meet on Wednesdays, usually after the day’s matters on the floor have wrapped up. Those meetings may now be pushed back further and further, if not piled into different days, just like motions have been moved on. And what of the parliamentary staff, skipping lunch breaks to accommodate the demanding needs of the Council all because twice now, and maybe a third time, the opposition has failed to properly craft the motion? All this mess and commotion because those opposite are too proud to take this to the Procedure Committee.

I will note that in the last, or present, iteration of these orders, short-form documents motions were taken out of general business, and that inadvertently made it so that any member could move documents motions. The opposition repeatedly refused to listen to the government’s warning of unintended consequences, and as a result the crossbench suffered. The crossbench and the government decided to withdraw our documents motions to correct the mishaps caused by the opposition. This is an entirely avoidable debacle. The crossbench should not be collateral in the opposition’s incompetence. We should not be in the habit in this chamber of routinely changing sessional orders on a whim, and I hope that the lessons have now been learned. I hope, moving forward, that all sides of this chamber can come to an understanding that toying so loosely with the governing sessional orders is not good for the operations of this Parliament. I would certainly hope that those opposite take the advice on board and refer matters to the committee to review before wasting precious time on the parliamentary floor.

There are around 16 sitting weeks in Parliament of three days each, and as important as sessional orders are, I do not think that spending one of those days per week on the opposition endlessly amending their own motions out of stubbornness not to go to the committee is a good use of time. I hope that the lesson has been learned firmly as we approach the third rendition of this motion and moving forward that we refer all these matters to the Procedure Committee.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (14:12): I am tempted to start quoting several of my colleagues, but I will refrain from doing that. This is a motion that is a source of frustration for the government side, and the main reason for that is because of the lack of review, consideration and thoughtfulness that has been put into the first, second and now, potentially, the third iteration of this motion in relation to sessional orders for this chamber.

What a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. I do not think there is actually a law of unintended consequences, but if there was, that would be too generous for describing this issue, this mistake that was made by Mr Davis. It would be too generous because if it was an unintended consequence, it would be the unintended consequence of a due process of consideration, and that we certainly have lacking here. The most recent iteration of the sessional orders removed short-form documents motions from general business time on Wednesdays, which quite clearly meant that any other member of this chamber, including government members, could move these documents motions. Obviously that was not considered at all.

I just want to go through what a proper policy process might involve if it was going to consider a full range of impacts when we are thinking about changing something, particularly in this chamber when what we change here affects Victorian people, except of course what we are doing right here, right now in this motion. Let us have a look at what a good policy process entails – and the functional word here is ‘process’. The first step is consultation with the impacted community. So you would ask those impacted, ‘What do you think? How is it going to work for you?’ I would say that Minister Symes has definitely done that by raising the broader issues of adjournment and other issues that she is open to discussing changing, with others in this chamber – not unilaterally going and moving a motion.

Then the next step in a good process is consultation with the related sector or the technical community related to the particular issue. Again, that is about asking the experts or the people that work in the sector what they think. Then you need to draw on some research; that is going to make sure that all of the knowledge we have got is actually up to date, is applicable to the issues that we are looking at and is relevant to the social dynamics. Then every policy process should include an expression of values, an aspiration of what might be. Values underpin everything we do, so, ‘Why is it an issue? What is the problem?’

Then you start to get a bit more practical in the policy process. You start drafting some practical changes that might fix the problem, that might change the way something is done. It might include disenfranchised members of the community or society or redress an inequality, in the case of Labor’s values.

Then once you get some practical arrangements starting to shape up, you go back to consult again. You go and ask, ‘Would this be a possible solution? How would this work? What would this mean if we did it this way?’ And that is when you start to hear from those who oppose it, those who agree with it and those who support it but want it done another way, and you really start to refine how the change might happen. Then you might throw in a look from a regulatory and compliance perspective. Does this conflict with any other current legislation or regulations, and also, is it doable? Can we enforce it? That is always a really important question. There is no use changing a law, for instance, and not being able to enforce it. That is the point at which you start to come across unintended consequences.

But of course – here we go – we have not had a process. The appropriate process for this particular motion was the Procedure Committee. If it had gone through the Procedure Committee, we would have had proper consultation, we would have looked at the pros and cons and we would have been able to understand all of the strengths and weaknesses. We might have even provided opportunities for others in the chamber across the crossbench and our side to add value to it as well as to address any of the problems that might be a part of it. Then the technical experts – the staff, attendants and clerks team – make sure that everything works properly. That is that technical expertise.

No, it has just been written up, thrown to the chamber and here we are, not considering – I do take exception to this – the impact on staff hours of work. In fact it would be my personal view that sessional orders ought not be changed in this chamber ever without the consideration of the impacts on staff who support this chamber. Gone are the days when it was not reasonable to provide safe working hours, a safe working environment and a healthy lifestyle when it comes to a meal break and a rest, because we do understand that people cannot work effectively if they do not get a break.

We have told those opposite not to try and change sessional orders without proper consultation and oversight by the Procedure Committee. The Procedure Committee does play a really important role. It:

… considers any matter regarding the practices and procedure of the House and may consider any matter referred to it by the Council or the President.

That is exactly what should have happened in this case.

I would like to reiterate much of what my colleagues have said in this debate. I am the last contribution on this, highly likely. This has really not been a very courteous and respectful process, to make this change without going through the Procedure Committee and thinking about what the implications might be. It really is embarrassing for those opposite. What we should have been able to look at is what are the efficiencies in the chamber that could have been achieved through any changes to reflect a house that is now far more diverse than when many of the rules were written. Does it reflect that? Does it better reflect the house’s constitutional role as a house of review? Does it assist with improving and understanding the accessibility of house rules and the clarity of how the house works? Are there any contradictory or irrelevant rules that may make the application, explanation and interpretation of the standing orders difficult? Honestly that is exactly what the early iterations of this motion did, and it was very clever of our side to point out through our short-form docs motions that that was the error that was made.

I really think that this ought to be an opportunity to consider what other changes, particularly adjournment and other efficiencies, could be achieved by this. I appreciate Dr Mansfield expressing some similar sentiment in that space, which would be great conversation to have in the proper process so that we do not have to waste time in this chamber fixing up errors that really should not have been made in the first place. A fundamental rule of democracy is that all perspectives are considered and that there is no better place to demonstrate that than in this chamber, where the contest of ideas and concepts and values occurs on a regular basis, and that same principle ought to have been applied in this procedural change.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (14:22): I am pleased to rise to very briefly sum up on this motion and in doing so to thank members for their contributions. I do believe that the change will be supported. This does close a small loophole in the standing orders and the sessional orders, but I do think the government has filibustered through some of this, and I think that is the truth; I think that is a very mild way of putting it, but let us move on from that.

I will indicate that we are always happy to discuss things at the Procedure Committee, and indeed I have a list of items that could well be considered at the Procedure Committee. I have a small backlog off items that could be discussed there, and the President may decide to convene a meeting of the Procedure Committee for those discussions, but I think what these changes will do is they will give clarity about the ability for the non-government parties to go about their business on a Wednesday without undue fear that the government will use filibusters and other techniques to see particularly the last item on the agenda tampered with or obstructed, so we are happy to have that change.

I thank the crossbench for their support on this, in particular the Greens and the Animal Justice Party on this occasion, but all of the crossbench have seen the importance of having this clarity for the rest of the term.

Motion agreed to.