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

Certainly. The motion is to change the rules half-way through the ballot. And I am just referring to where this has come from: why the Labor Party would regard this as normal, where the Liberal and National parties, and hopefully the crossbenchers, would regard it as utterly abnormal. When there are rules you cannot change the pre-selection half-way through the ballot. You cannot, just because you want to get the member for Hindmarsh up as the Second Deputy Speaker, realise you have made a shambles of it and come in and try to change the rules to get the fix you want.

Are there any more examples that we need that this government is a shambles? We have had three Speakers—I am not reflecting on you, of course, Madam Speaker—in two years. The government lurches from one crisis to another—from one shambles to another. The Leader of the House made a complete hash, yesterday, of the election of a new Speaker. The government yesterday made the catastrophic decision to lead the Peter Slipper defence team in the parliament rather than do what the parliament knew it should have done. In fact, the former Speaker made the good judgement to resign last night—a judgement the Prime Minister did not have during question time.

So, we will be opposing this motion because you cannot change the rules half-way through. Bob Hawke got elected in 1984 on a slogan, 'You shouldn't change horses mid-stream.' It was a great slogan and he understood the principle that you cannot change the rules half-way through the process. This is the kind of thing you would have expected of the former Soviet Union.

Mr Mitchell interjecting—

You would be all across that, member for McEwen, because the former—

Mr Mitchell interjecting—

Were you Peking or Moscow? I imagine you were Moscow. This is the kind of thing you would have expected from the Moscow politburo, and they imported it into the Victorian ALP. Isn't that where the far Left came from? Bill Hartley in Victoria—was he Moscow aligned or Peking aligned? Or maybe he was aligned with Pyongyang; it would not surprise me at all. I will not delay the House much longer.

We will not be party to changing the rules for a political fix, to fix a caucus deal for the member for Hindmarsh. We will not be party to the shambles that this government has been for two years. We will not be party to fixing the Leader of the House's tactical and strategic errors yesterday. Therefore, the opposition will not be supporting this motion.

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