Procedure and House Affairs committee  That provision was introduced earlier this year, and it hasn't yet been used. I wonder how much it will end up being used. I don't know what the House of Commons is like, but the House of Representatives chamber, particularly during divisions, is not exactly a child-friendly environment.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There isn't any provision for parental leave. Members are entitled to receive their salaries and allowances as long as they continue to be members. For example, if they go on holidays, or they become ill and take time off, they continue to be paid their salaries and entitlements.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Some of them would be on their first terms, and others would be on second or third terms. It would vary. Some of them are quite experienced members. As I said earlier, the interesting point is, all of those members are recontesting this current election, so that would suggest some way or other they are dealing in a satisfactory way with all the issues they have to handle in balancing young children and their lives as parliamentarians.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Question time happens each day at 2:00 p.m. and lasts for an hour and ten minutes, so it goes on until 3:10 p.m.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Question period has happened at various times over history. It used to happen first up whenever the House would meet. It used to be at 3:00 p.m. It has been at 2:00 p.m. now for some considerable time. Certainly, there's discussion at various times about whether it should be at a different time of the day, but we all become creatures of habit, so I think 2:00 p.m. is probably a fairly settled time now.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's probably one of those things that gets lost in the mists of time. I suspect it was considered to be the most convenient time. I'm not sure whether there were any discussions about the time. It has been 2:00 p.m. for quite a long time now.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It is only some of the legislation. What we're getting is a sharing of the burden of the House between the Main Chamber and the Federation Chamber. Only certain pieces of legislation are referred to the Federation Chamber. It needs to be done by co-operation, so they tend to be the less controversial matters that might be debated.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's not the Speaker, and we don't have a business committee that operates in the House, so it would be discussions and negotiations between the Leader of the House and usually the Manager of Opposition Business. The Leader of the House would say to the opposition that there are certain items he would like to see debated in the Federation Chamber.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That tends to be the usual pattern, but at times there might only be a week's break. At other times we might sit one week, break for a week, and then sit for two weeks, but broadly speaking, the pattern is two weeks on and two weeks off. That's the broad pattern, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Really we would tend to only sit in two-week blocks. It would be very unusual; maybe at the end of a year we might have an additional week of sittings, or an initial few days of sittings, but I can't recall when we last sat for four weeks in a row. It would be a very long time ago.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Very similarly. It has at various times attracted controversy, and there have been comments at times about some aspects of what they call family reunion travel, and we had a whole range of travel issues that came out last year, and this was amongst those, this family reunion travel.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. Monday is 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m; Tuesday is 12 noon to 9:30 p.m., Wednesday is 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Thursday is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Those sittings are continuous. There are no formal meal breaks, but I should say that on the Mondays and Tuesdays, between the hours of 6:30 and 8, there are no divisions or quorums able to be called in the House which means that members can actually leave the building to have a break and have a meal between 6:30 and 8 on those two days.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's works in a very similar way. It is a much more informal chamber than the House of Representatives. It's a much smaller chamber. Even though all members are members of the Federation Chamber—in other words, all members can attend—we only provide seats for about 38 members in there, because generally there's only going to be a fairly small number of members there.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No. Unfortunately, they're terrible creatures of habit, so they do sit on their respective sides. Even our independent non-aligned members will sit somewhere in the middle. I think old habits die hard.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There is a set time for speeches. As I said, the rules for the Federation Chamber are really the same as the rules for the House. The speech time limits are the same as the speech time limits for similar sorts of presentations or similar sorts of business matters that operate in the House.