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Apart from the modernisation of expression achieved by the 1989 revision, the only substantial change occurred in 1981 when the requirement for motions to be seconded was removed from the standing orders on the recommendation of the Standing Orders Committee. The committee considered the matter initially in its Fifth Report for Fifty–ninth Session, tabled on 31 March 1980. It recommended that the existing practices continue. When the report was debated the following year, Senator Harradine (Ind, Tas) adverted to the fundamental inequity inherent in the practice of seconding for a senator like himself without party colleagues who, having been elected on the same basis as all other senators, did not enjoy an untrammelled right to move a motion or amendment. The committee reconsidered the matter and, in its Second Report for the Sixtieth Session, adopted without debate in November 1981, recommended that the requirement be abandoned. For many years the practice had been modified not to apply to ministers and party leaders in any case, and, as the committee noted, its origins were obscure and it had been abandoned already by “a number of important legislative assemblies, including the British House of Commons and both Houses of the United States Congress”.[1] There was no sound rationale for retaining it.
Senators regularly ask for questions to be divided so that the constituent parts may be voted on separately. Presidential rulings have upheld the principle that the chair should divide a question at the request of a senator if it is capable of division, so that senators are not compelled to vote for or against a group of propositions that they would otherwise have voted differently on. See Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice, 12th edition, p.217.
It has also been ruled that the question on an urgency motion may not be divided because that would be the equivalent of amending the motion which is prohibited under SO 75 (see SO 75).
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The requirement for motions and amendments to be seconded was removed largely due to the efforts of Senator Brian Harradine (Ind, Tas) (Source: Commonwealth Parliamentary Handbook)
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Standing order 113, relating to expedited proceedings on bills, requires that a motion containing any combination of the compound elements specified “shall be divided” at the request of any senator. This preserves the right of senators to debate those parts of the motion which have been otherwise excluded from debate by being amalgamated with the motion for the first reading of the bill or bills. For other examples of circumstances where complicated questions on legislation have been divided, see Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice, 12th edition, pp.259 and 308. |