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SENATE STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE
Second Report for the Sixty-first Session
October 1983
Presented and ordered to be printed 20 October 1983
Parliamentary Paper No. 111/1983
Parliamentary Paper No. 111/1983
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia
SENATE STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE
Second Report for the Sixty-first Session
October 1983
The Commonwealth Government Printer Canberra 1984
© Commonwealth of Australia 1984
Printed by Authority by the Commonwealth Government Printer
STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE
SECOND REPORT FOR THE SIXTY-FIRST SESSION
1983
The Standing Orders Committee has the honour to report to
the Senate that it has considered a number of matters, and
has agreed to the following report on one of the matters
referred to it.
TABLING OF DOCUMENTS
PURSUANT TO STANDING ORDER 364
1. Standing Order 364 provides:
A Document quoted from by a Senator not a Minister of the Crown may be ordered by the Senate to be laid upon the Table; such Order may be made without Notice
immediately upon the conclusion of the speech of the Senator who has quoted therefrom.
2. On 18 May 1982 a motion pursuant to the Standing
Order was passed, requiring a Senator to table a
document from which he had quoted. The Senator did
not have the document in his immediate possession,
but tabled it after leaving the chamber to obtain it.
The question then was raised whether a motion passed
pursuant to the Standing Order requires a Senator to
table the original document in which the words quoted
actually appear, even if that document is not in his
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possession, or whether such a motion requires the
tabling only of the document actually in the
Senator's possession in the chamber when he speaks.
Following debate on this question, it was referred to
the Standing Orders Committee for consideration.
3. The proceedings on 18 May 1982 were in accordance
with similar proceedings in the past, which involved
a Senator obtaining and tabling documents he did not
have in his immediate possession when he spoke. This
precedent, and the problem of interpretation
involved, are referred to in Odgers1 Australian
Senate Practice, 5th ed. p .591.
4. Each of the two interpretations of the procedure
under the Standing Order involves difficulties. If
the procedure requires the tabling only of documents
actually in the immediate possession of a Senator,
the intention of the Standing Order, that a Senator
may be required by the Senate to produce a document
which he purports to quote, so that the accuracy and
context of the quotation may be ascertained, may be
frustrated by a Senator simply leaving outside the
chamber any document which he wishes to quote. On the
other hand, if the procedure requires the tabling of
the original document regardless of whether the
Senator has it in his immediate possession, a Senator
is prevented from quoting anything unless he can
bring it to the chamber with him and be able and
willing to table it, however voluminous, difficult to
produce or confidential it may be.
5. On balance, it would seem that the better inter
pretation, in spite of the precedents referred to, is
that the procedure requires the tabling only of the
document actually in the Senator's immediate
possession, which means that if the quotation is
contained in speech notes or a copy of the original
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document, it is those notes or that copy which should
be tabled, and that if the Senator is quoting by
memory, he is clearly unable to comply with the order
of the Senate that the document be tabled. If other
Senators consider that a Senator may be making unfair
or improper use of quotations from a document which
he is not willing to produce, or misrepresenting the
contents of a document without giving the Senate an
opportunity to check the quotation, these are matters
which may be raised in debate.
The Committee recommends that the Standing Order be
so interpreted in future.
Douglas McClelland Chairman