Business of the house
Chamber decorum—Parliamentary language
Statement
The Speaker (Mr Stephen Price) (2:54 pm): Before members start moving around, and just as I did before question time, I have some housekeeping. This is going to be a common theme for a little while. I just want to talk about unparliamentary language. During question time, there were some instances of exchanges going on that should not have been going on while someone was trying to respond to a question. There was some language used along the lines of calling someone a coward, calling them gutless and calling them a hypocrite. That type of language usage is unparliamentary. If I hear anyone using that sort of language into the future, they will be called to withdraw that. When I ask you to withdraw something and say it is unparliamentary, there is no debate; there is no question about it—you just do as you are asked to do.
