David Norris (Independent)

It is the other side of his very engaging human qualities.

I believe all of us, including the Leader, would welcome some kind of consistency in the hours we meet although I know the difficulties she sometimes faces in arranging that. We are all involved in public life. Sometimes we are asked to commit ourselves to working lunches a week or even a month or two in advance. Then, if we meet at 12 p.m., 12.30 p.m. or 1 p.m., as we have tended to do recently, one has to cancel such engagements at the last minute.

Perhaps I might raise two more questions very briefly. I compliment Senator Leyden on introducing his Bill, which is extremely important. It addresses a real human problem regarding the location of wills in the aftermath of someone's death. He explained it extremely well on the one o'clock news. As a long-time member of this House, I very much welcome the positive publicity gained for it through a Government Member, who described himself with uncharacteristic modesty as a backbencher, using this House's facility to introduce a Bill. I am glad the Senator got Government support and that of coalition colleagues. I am sure that support will also be forthcoming from this side of the House. As a member of the Independent group, I will be reintroducing a new version of the Bill that I put forward, the Civil Registration Bill 2003, since the Government has once again shown an inability to grapple with the issue, and has characteristically kicked it into a committee. I am waiting. The committee will have reported by the autumn at which stage I will go to work on this matter hammer and tongs. We are lagging behind disastrously in the area of civil registration. Switzerland recently became the sixteenth country in Europe to introduce legislation in this regard. It is disgraceful that we are so far behind because the Government will not bite the bullet.

I ask for a continuing debate on Iraq. This is particularly important in light of recent international reports, published in the United States, which have begun to focus on the use of Shannon Airport in the process of extraordinary rendition. We must clean up our act now that the outside world has got wind of this story. I and others informed police about a prima facie case involving the criminal use of the aircraft in question, but nothing was done. As a Parliament, we are entitled to some answers on these issues.