Procedure and House Affairs committee  Okay, but let's use that as an opportunity to figure out how it can be addressed more effectively. I know that when omnibus bills arrive in the Senate, they adopt a motion after second reading to actually divide the bill to go to separate committees—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —with one committee having mastery of the entire bill. Then they submit bits and pieces to it. If you had a parallel chamber, you could devise the Standing Orders to allow specific portions of the omnibus bill to be debated in a parallel chamber. This means you could have focused debate, if that's what you feel would be useful.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Everything is a possibility.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think it depends really on how the House as a collectivity decides on the best way to manage the increasingly complex business that the House is confronted with.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Government business tends to be focused on one or two items per sitting. You could select, by some kind of arrangement with the government and the opposition parties, to allow for a third debate to take place that would create more opportunities for the members to participate and express their views on a bill that has already been initiated in the House and can now be discussed further in the parallel chamber while you're still discussing other government items in the main chamber.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That seems to be the way it's modelled, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, but there's no reason why this House has to restrict it to that kind of role.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You can do as much as you like.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Another thing might be useful. At Westminster they have the committee of chairs, the liaison committee, the backbench committee and other vehicles that are not yet established here and may never be established here. Since, for example, you have a subcommittee that deals with private members' business, if you really wanted to be bold, you could take on the responsibility or suggest that you, as the procedure committee, would be prepared to assist in setting the agenda of the parallel chamber.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The sour faces already give me your answer.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think they do, quite frankly. Well, the two models that we have are Australia and Westminster, and I don't think they do. I think really what you might want to do is to consider hours when the parallel committee could sit that still respect the family-friendly intent of more recent reforms and do not interfere with the general highlight of each sitting day, which is—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You could do it earlier in the day. You couldn't do it on a Wednesday because of caucus, but you could either do it earlier in the day or in a sort of, let's call it a slack period, if you identify it as such, in the middle of a sitting day.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I expect to be known as the old man of the Hill in some years.