Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I do not think your position on this is unreasonable. Therefore, other action needs to be taken. Accordingly, I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would allow the Leader of the Opposition to move the following motion:This Parliament recognises the responsibility we have to the people we are elected to represent, to improve parliamentary standards through the consistent application and enforcement of standing orders and use of language which is appropriate for the National Parliament.This House reaffirms our support for standing order 89, concerning that “a Member must not use offensive words against . . . a Member of Parliament”, standing order 90, that “all personal reflections on other Members shall be considered highly disorderly”, standing order 91b, concerning the withdrawal of “objectionable words”, and that House of Representatives Practice on page 294 makes it clear that “a motion may not be brought forward which . . . contains offensive or disorderly words”.This House therefore notes that the resolution moved by the Leader of the House on Thursday 25 May 2006, shown at page 33 of Hansard, that “that snivelling grub over there be not further heard” was not altered by the statement that “if I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally”, was therefore subsequently put to the House and carried at page 34 of Hansard, and is an out of order resolution and therefore must be rescinded.

A very substantial injustice has been done here. I do not put you at the centre of that injustice, Mr Speaker, but it is an injustice that has occurred nevertheless. What those injustices oblige you to do, or the course you have chosen to take, is effectively to have the chair treat one member of this chamber on the government side of the House in one form and the Manager of Opposition Business in another form. The Manager of Opposition Business was suspended from the service of this parliament today for doing exactly what was done and what was permitted to stand for a substantial period of time in this parliament by the Leader of the House, including a motion moved in identical terms and followed up by a refusal to withdraw an imputation against a member of the House in exactly identical terms. There is no difference between what the member for Lalor had to say today and what the Leader of the House had to say the other day on the dates that I mentioned here.

The motion that was then moved by the Leader of the House was of course massively disorderly. When we go to House of Representatives Practice we see, as this motion indicates, a very clear statement that ‘a motion may not be brought forward which contains offensive or disorderly words’. ‘That that snivelling grub over there be not further heard’ is quite clearly in absolute breach of that section of standing orders and ought to have been ruled out instantly by the Deputy Speaker at the time. As I said, I am discussing here the chair, not your personal behaviour, Mr Speaker. You were not there at the time these events took place. Nevertheless, you live with the consequences of the events which occurred. Quite clearly, the Deputy Speaker should have done two things on that occasion. The Deputy Speaker should have firstly ruled the motion which had been moved out of order and in clear breach of House of Representatives Practice. The second thing which should have occurred is that the Deputy Speaker on that occasion should have asked for, as was requested by those on this side of the House, an absolute withdrawal, an unconditional withdrawal, of the expression ‘grub’ as it applied to a member of this side of this House. Neither of those things happened at the time.

Subsequently, when you came back to the chair—some considerable number of pages of Hansard later—an unconditional withdrawal was sought and obtained. However, the record stands: that motion was carried by this chamber and it is a very difficult situation to correct. When that motion and the behaviour associated with it were tested by this side of the House, the experience of the Manager of Opposition Business was very different from the experience of the Leader of the House. In fact, she has been obliged to leave the chamber. I think that is an unfortunate thing. She was making a point. Quite clearly in the words that you have utilised in your explanation in this chamber, you have found the circumstances unacceptable, the position adopted by the Leader of the House unacceptable, the motion that he moved unacceptable and the chairing of the Deputy Speaker at that time unacceptable. That is the clear implication in all of the things that you have had to say in the remarks you have made.

Unfortunately, what we have been left with from all of that are too substantial injustices, one to the Manager of Opposition Business, the honourable member for Lalor. She is a respectable member of this place. She is a person of great substance in this chamber and a person who is listened to when she rises to her feet to make a point here. She now has to live with the opprobrium, which is welcomed more avidly by some than by others, of having been suspended from the service of this chamber. There are members who avidly seek that notoriety. She is not one of them. So she has now found herself in a situation where simply pursuing to a point of clarity what ought to have been normal behaviour in this place has caused her to be suspended from the service of this House. That is not good, Mr Speaker. That should simply not have happened and the matter should simply not conclude at the point at which we find ourselves right now, admirable though your subsequent rulings may have been and in accordance with standing orders as your subsequent insistence on particular behaviours might have been, requesting that these sorts of words ought to be withdrawn and these motions ought to be moved as the normal thing for a chair to have done. So, as I have said, I am not reflecting on you, your rulings or the chair, at least not on your handling of the chair. I am reflecting big time on the handling of the chair on that particular day, but that is a matter that was dealt with in argument in this place at that point of time.

So how do we correct this? That is the position that we are now in. We have had the situation where the member for Lalor has been suspended from the service of the House. That motion has been passed and that is a very difficult thing in itself to rescind. We have a situation where the different treatment accorded, for whatever set of reasons, to the manager of government business has been permitted to stand. Somehow we have to right that and I cannot think of any way of righting that other than by this motion which I am proposing to the chamber and for which I have sought a suspension of standing orders in order to do that. The relevant part of this motion is the last part of it. It says this:

This House therefore notes that the resolution moved by the—

manager of government business—

... on Thursday 25 May 2006, shown at page 33 of Hansard, that “that snivelling grub over there be not further heard” was not altered by the statement that “if I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally”, was therefore subsequently put to the House and carried at page 34 of Hansard, and is an out of order resolution and therefore must be rescinded.

Should a suspension motion be carried, then all that would happen would be that this motion that I propose would then be debated. Should that motion then be passed, I think it would be incumbent upon the manager of government business to give notice that a motion rescinding that particular motion should be moved. It is appropriate that the manager of government business, not those on this side of the House, move that motion. But if the House were to accept the motion that I have put forward, that would be a very clear indication to the manager of government business that we expect such a motion to be moved. So, Mr Speaker, in order to clear this up, in order to take it out as effectively as we can—and you cannot alter Hansardin order to secure a situation where a rescission motion produces the sort of outcome that you have effectively said ought to be there in the way in which you have ruled on this, I would hope that, firstly, the parliament would agree to this suspension and then agree to the motion and that subsequently the manager of government business would move the appropriate rescission.

See this speech in context