It is proposed to order Nos. 1, 2 and 4 for today. It is proposed as usual to take Private Members' Business from 6.30 p.m. to 8 p.m., following a break from 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. I say for the information of Senators that the House will be sitting tomorrow when it is proposed to take No. 3, the Copyright Bill, in Committee, first and then to resume the debate on Second Stage of the Criminal Justice Bill.
Order of Business.
Is there any possibility that the debate on the New Ireland Forum motion could be extended first of all in time and, equally, in the amount of time available to each speaker? I raise this matter because this will be the first time that we will have the opportunity to discuss this very historic and important document and I feel that a number of Senators would like to contribute, for longer than the 15 minutes that is mandatory at present. I appeal to the Chair that we be allowed to extend the three-hour limit and that Members who want to contribute to this debate should be allowed to do so without a constraint of time as long as they stay within the New Ireland Forum debate.
I agree with those sentiments. It is a very important debate and I would like to think that we would be given extra time. Could the Leader of the House indicate if he is willing to extend the time for the debate on the New Ireland Forum Report which, after all, is a major document of very great importance to this country and to the future of the country?
In particular because this is a motion I am proposing, I would like to join with Senator Lanigan and Senator Rogers in asking for more than the minimal three hours time for this motion. If one works it out, three hours gives very little time for the generality of Members of the House to speak. Quite a number of Members have talked to me about it in advance and expressed a desire to speak and to try to make a reasonable contribution towards it. I can appreciate that Senator Dooge probably does not want us to go on forever and perhaps we should accept some limit on the amount of time each speaker could use. At the same time, I think that 15 minutes is a very short time to deal with the enormous issues raised in the Forum report and three hours is a very short time to deal with the whole subject, bearing in mind that we have both a motion and an amendment which means that we have a proposer and a seconder for both of these, and that would take up a large proportion of the three hours that would be available.
We of the Labour group feel that such a unique initiative would need much wider debate than the ordinary Private Members' motion would allow for. Having regard to the fact that we are in agreement with the Government amendment as put down there is no problem at all, but because of the peculiar and wide ranging nature of this matter, we feel that with extended time in this House in particular, I say with emphasis, we could have a very constructive and informative debate. In the final analysis it is much more suitable to have a debate of that nature in this House than in the other House. I support the proposal.
While I am on my feet, let me congratulate the Leader of the House on his appointment to an important position under the aegis of the European Community. I wish him well and I only regret that the media did not recognise that he has been a Senator almost as long as he is a professor.
I do not think that anybody would disagree with the proposal that the Forum report deserves an enormous amount of consideration, but I, for one, would be very unhappy if the debate on the Forum is to be extended at the expense of the very limited time that we all recognise we have to deal with legislation on which my views are pretty well known and which I would regard as creating a recipe for a similar sort of problem down here in this part of the country. If people want to have the Forum report debated, then I would strongly request that it should be done by extending the periods of sitting of this House and not by eating into the time that we have available to discuss the Criminal Justice Bill.
I am sympathetic to the views that have been raised in regard to this question of the Forum debate. Indeed, when the motion was put down consideration was given as to whether it would not be better to put down a Government motion, which, of course, would not be subject to the limitation of time for individual speeches, or total time of debate as is the case with a Private Members' motion. However, the view was taken that there might well be within a few months a period in which it would be more appropriate to have a full debate in Government time. We all hope that before the end of the year there will be developments which would justify a full debate. In the light of that view it was decided to leave this as a Private Members' motion and, as it were, not to take it over by a Government motion.
In regard to the points that have been put forward about the length of the debate and the limitation of speeches, I am sympathetic in regard to both of these. I would suggest that the House should agree to suspend the limitation on the length of the debate and this would best be done by stretching this particular debate from two periods of Private Members' Time to three periods of Private Members' Time. We could then devote four and a half hours to the debate. We could, of course, possibly consider extending that again to six if we find a distinct amount of pressure when we debate it for the second time next week. I certainly would have no objection to that being done.
In regard to the question of the limitation on individual speakers I agree that the time of 15 minutes is a severe limitation. Indeed, inside the Committee on Procedure and Privileges I argued that that period should be 20 minutes. I find it difficult sometimes to hold myself within 15 minutes. We have the problem here that the reason for holding down each speaker to 15 minutes is to allow as many speakers as possible to come in. I would not like to see this becoming open-ended in the present debate, but consideration might be given, perhaps in discussions held outside the Chamber between now and the opening of the debate, as to whether there should not be some extension of the period of 15 minutes per speaker. I would be thinking now of an extension to possibly 20 minutes; certainly nothing beyond 30 minutes would find favour with me at the moment, but I would be open to persuasion.
I thank the Leader of the House for what he has said and I agree that possibly we should not have an open-ended time for every speaker. I thank him for his consideration of the remarks that I made in relation to the extra time. I presume that what he means is that if we allow this debate to continue on, and if we see that after four and a half hours we need an extra hour he will give consideration to allowing us the extra hour. I agree with him equally that possibly 15 minutes is enough for any speaker to make the points that need to be made but if in exceptional circumstances somebody feels that he has a point to make that has not been made already, he should be allowed the leniency of the Chair which is always forthcoming to people who abide by his decisions finally when decisons have to be made. I thank the Leader of the House for his consideration.
Order of Business agreed to.