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

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  Well, the proportion of women in the House of Representatives is around 25%, and it's been around that figure now for a number of years. It climbed up from a much lower level and now it's plateaued at about 25% to 30%. We're just going through an election, so I don't know what th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  At various times it would be used by all those female members who are breastfeeding children. They wouldn't use it, for example, for every division. Sometimes they'll appear for a vote, but at other times they'll give their proxy vote to their whip. I should emphasize two things

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There was a particular context to it. It was going to be a purely private members' business day, so there was not going to be a question period as there usually is on a sitting day. The then prime minister and other ministers made it clear that they wouldn't necessarily be ther

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Just as a bit of background, there has been a lot of debate and a lot of discussion over quite a long time about the length of sitting hours and sitting days. At one stage we were finishing at 8 p.m. because of this focus on family-friendly hours, and that did last and was quite

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's correct. Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I might get my colleague, James Catchpole, to respond to that. He's the Serjeant-at-Arms and the nuts-and-bolts person who looks after all the welfare of members and so on.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think it was related to what I've said about the demands that members have. We had a brief experiment a number of years ago with the reintroduction of Friday sittings, but it only lasted one sitting Friday. It was best described as probably a complete debacle. It had nothing to

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sometimes they do. Female members with very young children will be bringing their children to Canberra, because they're still breastfeeding those very young children. During school holidays, if our sittings happen to coincide with school holidays, you'll see probably more familie

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. Obviously, the Parliament is based in Canberra, and as you say, Australia, like Canada, is a very big place. Members do a lot of travelling within their own constituencies and some of them have huge constituencies, just as I'm sure there are some huge constituencies in Cana

Procedure and House Affairs committee  A very long explanation would be needed. The shortened version is that it's a mechanism for resolving differences between the two Houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives, where the Senate has failed to pass legislation on two occasions that the House of Representative

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Chair. Good morning to you from Australia, and good evening to you in Canada. My colleague James Catchpole and I have prepared for the committee a few notes on the matters we think you're covering in your proceedings. I didn't propose to make anything much in the way

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's 8:00 Wednesday morning.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Our second chamber, which is now called the Federation Chamber, commenced in 1994. I suppose the background to the initiative was that there seemed to be a lot of pressure on the time in the House, and it was not unusual for government to be, as we call it, “guillotining legislat