Mr PYNE (Sturt—Manager of Opposition Business) (09:09): All the honeyed words of the Leader of the House do not abrogate the fact that this is an absolute setup to fix up the shambles of yesterday in the House of Representatives. This is the sort of thing that you expect at the ALP conference in Sussex Street, New South Wales; this is the kind of thing that you expected from the politburo of the former Soviet Union. The government is changing the rules halfway through the ballot. That is what the Labor Party is proposing to do today: change the rules halfway through the ballot. The parliament met last night and elected a Speaker. We then elected a Deputy Speaker. The member for Hindmarsh lost. The government, to its horror, realised that the standing orders meant that the Second Deputy Speaker could not be the member for Hindmarsh. They have obviously done a factional deal to give the member for Hindmarsh a job to try and prop him up in his seat of Hindmarsh before the next election, to try and give him a bit of profile in his seat in South Australia. The government tried to do a deal with the member for Hindmarsh and they have realised that he cannot be the Second Deputy Speaker under 13(c) of the standing orders and that it has to be a member of the non-government side of the House, which means a member of the Liberal and National parties or the crossbenches. So they had to change the rules. In typical ALP style they adjourned the parliament last night—we did not finish the ballot last night, which of course we should have—and came into the House this morning when the Leader of the House proposed a fix. It is a fix so that the member for Hindmarsh can be the Second Deputy Speaker. This is not the greatest issue of moment before the House today but it is an important principle of the chamber and an important principle of politics that you cannot change the rules half-way through the ballot just because you were not going to win. I know that the right wing in the New South Wales ALP have been doing this to the Leader of the House for his whole career. I know that Senator Faulkner, from the Left in New South Wales, would be smiling today, thinking to himself that Mr Albanese, Leader of the House, is getting a bit of his own back on the Liberal and National Party, because for years the Left in New South Wales have had to put up with just this kind of thing. When they were about to win a preselection for a state or federal seat the state executive of Sussex Street would come in and change the rules. Ms Bird interjecting— Mr PYNE: They would abolish the preselection and give the federal executive the vote so that they could get the right-wing candidate in—Sharon Bird, for example. Sharon Bird is being very noisy over there, Madam Speaker. The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business will refer to people by their appropriate titles. Mr PYNE: The member for Cunningham would have been— The SPEAKER: And refer to the motion before the chair. Mr PYNE: Certainly. The motion is to change the rules half-way through the ballot. And I am just referring to where this has come from: why the Labor Party would regard this as normal, where the Liberal and National parties, and hopefully the crossbenchers, would regard it as utterly abnormal. When there are rules you cannot change the preselection half-way through the ballot. You cannot, just because you want to get the member for Hindmarsh up as the Second Deputy Speaker, realise you have made a shambles of it and come in and try to change the rules to get the fix you want. Are there any more examples that we need that this government is a shambles? We have had three Speakers—I am not reflecting on you, of course, Madam Speaker—in two years. The government lurches from one crisis to another—from one shambles to another. The Leader of the House made a complete hash, yesterday, of the election of a new Speaker. The government yesterday made the catastrophic decision to lead the Peter Slipper defence team in the parliament rather than do what the parliament knew it should have done. In fact, the former Speaker made the good judgement to resign last night—a judgement the Prime Minister did not have during question time. So, we will be opposing this motion because you cannot change the rules half-way through. Bob Hawke got elected in 1984 on a slogan, 'You shouldn't change horses mid-stream.' It was a great slogan and he understood the principle that you cannot change the rules half-way through the process. This is the kind of thing you would have expected of the former Soviet Union. Mr Mitchell interjecting— Mr PYNE: You would be all across that, member for McEwen, because the former— Mr Mitchell interjecting— Mr PYNE: Were you Peking or Moscow? I imagine you were Moscow. This is the kind of thing you would have expected from the Moscow politburo, and they imported it into the Victorian ALP. Isn't that where the far Left came from? Bill Hartley in Victoria—was he Moscow aligned or Peking aligned? Or maybe he was aligned with Pyongyang; it would not surprise me at all. I will not delay the House much longer. We will not be party to changing the rules for a political fix, to fix a caucus deal for the member for Hindmarsh. We will not be party to the shambles that this government has been for two years. We will not be party to fixing the Leader of the House's tactical and strategic errors yesterday. Therefore, the opposition will not be supporting this motion.