Australia needs a speaker who will encourage healthy debate

Indeed, one of the wittiest interjections in the House came during a Menzies answer – at a time when he was at the zenith of his career, and unchallenged as a parliamentary performer.

Sir Robert was telling the House how “popular” his government was with the workers, and illustrated the claim by telling the House that a truck driver wearing a blue singlet had pulled up beside his official car in Melbourne, wound the window down and shouted “good on you Bob!”

Before Menzies could sit down, the Member for Sydney, Jim Cope, interjected: “He should have been charged with drink driving.”

The House broke into laughter – and Menzies laughed loudest of all!

Such an event simply could not happen under the current regime.

House of Representatives Practice, which draws on rulings by Speakers since 1901, and on House of Commons Practice and Erskine May, the Parliamentary Bible, makes it very clear that interjections should not be outlawed completely as this extract (p486) confirms:

It may be accepted that, as the House is a place of thrust and parry, the Chair need not necessarily intervene in the ordinary course of debate when an interjection is made.

What a pity Speaker Andrew does not follow that common-sense approach, one which is followed in the House of Commons and most Parliaments I have observed, including the Legislative Assembly of Queensland.

We live in an era in which public confidence in parliament, and even democracy itself, has never been lower.

Robust debate – and witty or telling interjections – will help restore confidence, not further erode it. It need not degenerate into a rabble – but it needs to be recognised as a place of thrust and parry, and the sooner the better.

In more than 40 years observing parliament, I have seen and heard some good speakers and some dreadful ones. Sir Billy Mackie Snedden (1975-83), Sir William John Aston (1966-1972), and the last Labor Speaker, Stephen Martin, were the better ones, the latter partly because he presided over Parliament in the Keating era and managed to do so with admirable fairness!

Nothing better illustrates how dull and boring question time has become than does the fact that the marginal-seat government MPs sitting on “death row” – apparently to maximise their exposure to their electorates – spend most of question time tapping away on laptops!