Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on your elevation to such high office. Something that has not been mentioned about your good self today has been your passion for the environment and the work that you have done on committees, which I have witnessed very clearly, as well as your passion for future generations to engage in environmental matters and the work that you have put into that. I felt that that was not mentioned today. I would like to raise that with you now. I congratulate you and the Deputy Speaker on your appointment to your positions. I said to you privately today—and I do not mind telling those both in the House and watching on broadcast—that all good things come to those who wait. You have waited, you have been patient and you have come to a place and a time when you have achieved your goal.

I want to go back to when the member for Watson was talking about the opposition. He was talking about passion. He said that the opposition finally has some backbone on this issue. My great disappointment tonight is that we are talking about an issue that the broader Australian public listening to this broadcast could not care less about, and that is what is going on in this House. While they will have understood what the member for Hinkler and other members of the House have said, they will ask why, when tomorrow we are going into a day that is about hope, about the future and about steps towards reconciliation, we would be discussing this matter at length in the House tonight. For me, we have to because we need to be constantly vigilant in everything we do with regard to the freedoms we enjoy. The member for Watson talked about passion. I have three positions that I want to take here. Firstly, this should have had more consideration. It should have gone to a committee and come back with bipartisan support as to how we might approach it. Secondly, I am very happy with five days of full-on parliamentary activity. If that is what you want, bring it on. That was my understanding of what the new Prime Minister put forward to the public of Australia. I was of the understanding and other people were of the understanding that we were just going to sit another day, which would give plenty of time for all of the new backbenchers and all of those within this House to have a greater opportunity to speak. Thirdly, there are problems, and the member for Hinkler came close to them. I say to the new members: I hope you have bucketloads, barrow loads, trailer loads of passion about what you do in this House on behalf of the Australian people. Never, ever misunderstand the important role that you play and what an honour it is to be a member of this House, whatever role you play within it. Whatever job you are given, wherever you are, very few people come to this House, and you are greatly honoured by the constituents who have elected you to this place.

The problem is this. Say on a Friday a recalcitrant, passionate member of parliament decided he was going to be extremely passionate about an issue that somebody on the other side might take issue with. You would end up, unusually in this place, in uproar—and we have seen the former opposition now in government try it week after week when the Speaker was trying to take control of the House. What would be left at the Speaker’s disposal? One option is expulsion for an hour. If the individual recalcitrant member from either side of the House then says, ‘I’m not moving,’ are we going to call on the Serjeant-at-Arms to pull out a shotgun and drive him or her out of this House? I don’t think so! It has never happened before and it will not happen in the time of this parliament. So what is the next thing that you can do? The Speaker can then name that person, and there would be a vote of the House for their removal and a discussion in the course of that debate. But that cannot happen on a Friday: ‘Oh, but we can defer the debate’—so the mayhem goes on in the House for the Friday, which is now called backbench Friday. It is only backbenchers who are causing this mayhem, not frontbenchers. So you have a day of recalcitrance riding over the authority of the Speaker, which can then be tested at the end of the day if there is anybody left to test it. If there is nobody left to test it, it can be held over until the next sitting of parliament three weeks later. Are the members of parliament at that time still as passionate about the issue three weeks later or are we left with a whole lot of people in trouble?

What would actually happen, I believe, is this. Given the intransigence of the room, the Speaker would then, out of disorder in the parliament, call a halt to the proceedings. That is what would happen: it would finish on the spot. If you want to get a bit of notoriety in this place—and don’t do this!—you would cause that mayhem and you would cause the Speaker to call you to account. You would then call the Speaker to account, you would dissent from the Speaker’s ruling and the parliamentary sitting would be closed. You would be on the front page of the local Examiner, or whatever it is, the next day—and you would probably not make it onto the front of anything else because no-one would be bothered.

I have said my piece; we have been asked to say our piece and sit down. I am very happy to say this. If you want to work an extra day, we will be right behind you. We will give you 100 per cent support right now if you give us a reasonable opportunity to have a full day of parliament with all the opportunities that go with that and all of the safeguards that have been put in place by the members who have gone before us in this place who have had wisdom and knowledge and had consideration of these issues. That is why we have the standing orders we have today: those who have gone before us have put them in place so we do not have to go through this type of debate. That is why the standing orders are so important: they come out of a wealth of experience, knowledge and consideration.

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