Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

All the honeyed words of the Leader of the House do not abrogate the fact that this is an absolute setup to fix up the shambles of yesterday in the House of Representatives. This is the sort of thing that you expect at the ALP conference in Sussex Street, New South Wales; this is the kind of thing that you expected from the Politburo of the former Soviet Union. The government is changing the rules halfway through the ballot. That is what the Labor Party is proposing to do today: change the rules halfway through the ballot. The parliament met last night and elected a Speaker. We then elected a Deputy Speaker. The member for Hindmarsh lost.

The government, to its horror, realised that the standing orders meant that the Second Deputy Speaker could not be the member for Hindmarsh. They have obviously done a factional deal to give the member for Hindmarsh a job to try and prop him up in his seat of Hindmarsh before the next election, to try and give him a bit of profile in his seat in South Australia. The government tried to do a deal with the member for Hindmarsh and they have realised that he cannot be the Second Deputy Speaker under 13(c) of the standing orders and that it has to be a member of the non-government side of the House, which means a member of the Liberal and National parties or the crossbenches. So they had to change the rules. In typical ALP style they adjourned the parliament last night—we did not finish the ballot last night, which of course we should have—and came into the House this morning when the Leader of the House proposed a fix. It is a fix so that the member for Hindmarsh can be the Second Deputy Speaker.

This is not the greatest issue of moment before the House today but it is an important principle of the chamber and an important principle of politics that you cannot change the rules half-way through the ballot just because you were not going to win. I know that the right wing in the New South Wales ALP have been doing this to the Leader of the House for his whole career. I know that Senator Faulkner, from the Left in New South Wales, would be smiling today, thinking to himself that Mr Albanese, Leader of the House, is getting a bit of his own back on the Liberal and National Party, because for years the Left in New South Wales have had to put up with just this kind of thing. When they were about to win a pre-selection for a state or federal seat the state executive of Sussex Street would come in and change the rules.

Ms Bird interjecting—

They would abolish the pre-selection and give the federal executive the vote so that they could get the right-wing candidate in—Sharon Bird, for example. Sharon Bird is being very noisy over there, Madam Speaker.

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