Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

listen—which are of fundamental importance to them and which are sometimes of fundamental significance for issues of conscience.

The Labor Party talk a lot about conscience but their party rules prevent them from pursuing it, so constantly we are confronted by calls of conscience on this side of the House, which of course is not something the Labor Party can subject themselves to. But let me just mention three subjects which were pursued by way of private members’ bills during the recent past: the ratification of the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the quashing of the Northern Territory’s power to legislate with respect to euthanasia, and the bill on mandatory sentencing also affecting the Northern Territory. The last of these was of course moved at the initiative of the then member for Calare, the late Mr Andren. I take this opportunity to reiterate the great respect I have for Mr Andren, a respect which I know is shared by members on both sides of the House.

At that particular time, the member for Calare brought forward a private member’s bill which was called the bill to overturn mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory. This caused a significant degree of interest on both sides of the parliament. As a result of discussions within the coalition party room, which were subsequently made public, a suspension was moved allowing Mr Andren to debate the suspension of standing orders on the bill. As a consequence of that, the government made very significant amendments to its position on the mandatory sentencing of children in the Northern Territory—and, to be fair, that meant the mandatory sentencing of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. Without the ability to support a suspension, which will be precluded by the sorts of changes that are being offered up by the government, this sort of thing would simply not be possible. Did the Chief Government Whip recognise this when he was drafting these? Did he recognise that it would be impossible for a person to move a motion and then to move a suspension of standing orders to have a debate on the issue? No. If he realised that, then it is not merely messy but culpable. I do not know how this was conceived, but the reality is that it cuts to the heart of the ability of private members to pursue issues, an ability which has already been truncated for decades in the Labor Party by its party rules and by the evolution towards greater and greater party discipline on our side of the House.

I think it is also important to raise another matter. There has been a lot of talk about consultation and the ugly things that the former Leader of the House did to the poor old opposition, but let me say that the major changes that were moved in 2004 to the standing orders were actually done by consensus, as was the move not to have divisions or quorums between 6.30 and eight. This was done by consensus. This was a major change, not a one-off change.

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