Federal Parliament will have an independent speaker under changes agreed by the three country independents and the major parties.

The independents - Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor - today held talks with Labor and the Coalition about a parliamentary overhaul.

In a joint statement this afternoon, they said the independent speaker deal symbolises a cultural change, but will allow whoever sits in the chair to "rule with a firm hand" and not be browbeaten by their own party.

Under the agreement, Question Time will also be overhauled, with questions limited to 45 seconds and answers capped at four minutes. The replies must also be relevant.

Mr Oakeshott said the changes would give ordinary MPs more power and strip away some of the control from the executive.

"The Australian political system up until now has been overly dominated by the executive, and the Parliament has played a secondary role to the executive, the ministers," he said.

"In the last parliament we didn't even talk about the gang of four. That's going to change in this parliament, and I think that is a positive change for parliamentary democracy in Australia."

Leader of the House Anthony Albanese and manager of Opposition business Christopher Pyne appeared alongside Mr Oakeshott to hail the deal.

"We have achieved a terrific outcome for the Parliament," Mr Albanese said.

"I'm very happy with these reforms. The Coalition has been pushing for them for some time," Mr Pyne said.

Mr Albanese says the changes will improve the standards of parliamentary behaviour.

"Hopefully today, with this agreement, what we have is goodwill and certainly a commitment I think from people here, otherwise it's just a bit of paper," he said.

Mr Pyne said if Coalition was in government, it would be prepared to go further to guarantee the speaker's independence.

"If a Coalition government has a clear majority of its own in the future, beyond the next election, we would seek to establish a Westminster-style speaker who leaves their party, is not paired, but is not contested at future elections so that they can be even more independent than this speaker will be," Mr Pyne said.

'Dodged a bullet'

Mr Oakeshott said Australians "have dodged a bullet" on the issue of who will be speaker in a deadlocked Parliament.

"The first item of business on the first day when the Parliament sits is not the formation of a government, it is putting someone in the speaker's chair," he said.

"Now unless we got agreement today on this document, we were potentially going to be staring at each other all in a room and embarrassing the nation."

Mr Windsor, who also appeared before reporters, added: "This is a great moment, in my view."

Labor agreed on the independents' proposals yesterday, but there were some sticking points for the Coalition.

However, the Coalition signed off on the deal this afternoon.

"Thankfully there has been goodwill across the board and we nailed it," Mr Oakeshott said.

The independents are expected to announce tomorrow which party they will back to form a minority government.

Last week Labor secured the vote of both Melbourne Greens MP Adam Bandt and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie, bringing the party to within two seats of the 76 needed for it to retain power.