Federal parliament to become more family friendly after changes to rules for MPs

A toxic culture inside Parliament House involving rampant bullying and sexual harassment has forced one major change.

Federal parliament is set to become more family friendly after changes were made to the rules for politicians.

Labor pushed through changes to the standing orders – the rules of the House of Representatives – as its first order of businesses on the first sitting day of the 47th parliament.

The shake-up includes earlier starts and more periods where no divisions can be called in an effort to have MPs out of parliament earlier in the evenings.

Parliament will start at 9am on Wednesdays and Thursdays, it won’t sit during the holidays and there will be no divisions past 6.30pm.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his MPs voted for the standing order amendments on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The government’s Leader of the House, Tony Burke, said the amendments were in line with recommendations made by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner in her landmark review of parliamentary culture.

“Mr Speaker, every time we come together after an election, the incoming government always is at a situation where they’ve reviewed standing orders. This time the context is different,” Mr Burke said in the lower house on Wednesday.

“This time, we have all had to deal with the issues that were raised in the Set the Standard report from Kate Jenkins.”

Mr Albanese was photographed holding Dash, Lilley MP Anika Wells’ son, during the election campaign. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

Mr Burke said one of the issues raised by the report was how to get through parliamentary business without doing “the absurdly late nights” that created working conditions that were “neither healthy nor safe”.

He said change was “always controversial” and he wasn’t “expecting anything different”.

He also proposed amendments to how late urgent bills can be debated. The cut-off time will now be 10pm, with a vote to be held the next morning.

In another significant change, crossbenchers will get three questions during question time instead of one.

Labor and the crossbench voted in favour for the changes to the standing orders. They were opposed by the Coalition.

Originally published as Federal parliament to become more family friendly after changes to rules for MPs