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Title

Ch8 Order of business and the sitting day / QUORUM / Standing orders provisions / Quorum at time of meeting

Database

House Practice

Date

01-05-2005

Source

House of Reps

Parl No.

41

Chapter

Order of business and the sitting day

Chapter No.

Chapter 08

Page

266

Section No.

 

System Id

procedural/practcer/chapter08.60.doc


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Ch8 Order of business and the sitting day / QUORUM / Standing orders provisions / Quorum at time of meeting



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House of Representatives                                Ch 8                                                 p 266

 

Order of business and the sitting day / QUORUM / Standing orders provisions

 

Quorum at time of meeting

At the commencement of each sitting the Speaker takes the Chair, and if a quorum is present, reads Prayers. 1 If a quorum is not present when the Chair is taken, and if within five minutes, the bells having been rung, a quorum is still not present, the Speaker adjourns the House until the next sitting day, subject to the proviso that if the Speaker is satisfied there is likely to be a quorum within a reasonable time the Speaker announces that he or she will take the Chair at a stated time. If at that time there is not a quorum, the Speaker adjourns the House until the next sitting day. 2 No Member may leave the Chamber while the bells are ringing until a quorum is present. 3

The Speaker has taken the Chair and, finding that a quorum of Members was not present, has ordered the bells to be rung. A quorum was then formed, and the Speaker read Prayers. Following one such occasion a Member raised the possibility of changing the standing orders so that those Members who wished to avoid Prayers could do so. 4

In 1913, before the introduction of the proviso in the standing orders which gives the Speaker the discretion to take the Chair at a stated time, the Speaker declared the House adjourned because a quorum was not present either at the time fixed for the meeting of the House or within the prescribed time. The Members present were listed in the Votes and Proceedings and the meeting was recorded as a sitting of the House. 5

In 1905, on the last sitting day of a session, when there was no quorum present at the time fixed for the meeting of the House at 2.45 p.m., Speaker Holder took the Chair at 3.07 p.m. in view of the fact that a message from the Governor-General desiring the immediate attendance of Members in the Senate Chamber had been announced. 6 This action was explained as being taken in accordance with the then practice of the House of Commons that a message from the Crown ‘makes a House’. 7



S.O. 54.



S.O. 57.



S.O. 56(d).



VP 1974-75/379; H.R. Deb. (28.11.74) 4231-2.



VP 1913/63.



VP 1905/227; H.R. Deb. (21.12.05) 7461.



May , 10th edn, p. 224; Josef Redlich, The procedure of the House of Commons , Archibald Constable, London, 1908, vol. II, pp. 68-9.