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

on the basis of a falsehood. He also said in his speech yesterday:

I have asked you, Madam Speaker, to answer questions about the extent to which the Liberal Party has cashed in on you being in that chair.

He said:

… Madam Speaker, this one reflects on you. This one reflects personally on a judgement call that you made that previous speakers either had parties that were decent enough to not ask or speakers who had integrity enough to say no.

But the fact is, Madam Speaker, the former member for Watson, Mr McLeay, had held fundraisers in the Speaker's dining room. The Manager of Opposition Business, if he was a gentleman, would apologise to you for reflecting on the speakership, because reflecting on the Speaker is one of the worst crimes that a member of parliament can do in this place.

The pattern since you were elected Speaker has been to denigrate you as Speaker and to denigrate the speakership, whether it has been dissent motions moved from the day that you were elected Speaker, calling you a witch on the first day that you were elected Speaker, moving a no confidence motion in you as Speaker, and yesterday, of course, the grotesque reflection on you as Speaker, accusing you of wrongdoing and accusing you of holding a fundraiser in the Speaker's dining room, in breach of rules unable to be named and in an unprecedented way. But, in fact, the precedent occurred under the predecessor of the current member for Watson's seat—Mr McLeay as the Speaker. This has been a pattern from the first day that you were elected to that office. There has not been a moment that the Manager of Opposition Business and the Labor Party frontbench have not been trying to badger and harass you in this role. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the level of shouting at you as Speaker is bullying you in that role.

Therefore, I do move this very serious motion. It is a motion to require the Manager of Opposition Business to do what he should have done as soon as I pointed out in my question to you at the end of question time that the basis of his motion attacking you yesterday was completely wrong and based on a falsehood. Perhaps his staff should have done better research. Perhaps before he had come into the chamber and feigned this mock outrage for the umpteenth time, his staff should have done better research. Rather than getting a tip-off from the Leader of the Opposition's office that this had occurred and racing out using the Labor Party's dirt unit, their smear and innuendo unit, to try to get these stories up in the papers and in the chamber, perhaps he should have paused and thought carefully about whether this might ever have occurred before. If he had done the research that my office did today, he would have thrown up the article that I quoted from before—that was in 2000, Wednesday, 9 August, when Brian Toohey wrote in the Financial Review under the headline 'Guess who's coming to dinner?':

The former Labor Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Leo McLeay, acknowledged that he held a fundraising lunch with about eight business executives on one occasion in Parliament House.

He said Mr Keating may have dropped in at the beginning or end of lunch, which was held in the Speaker's official dining room. His recollection is that Mr Keating was treasurer at the time or had moved to the backbench before becoming PM.

Why is this so important? It is important for two reasons. It is important because the opposition have to understand that they cannot keep trying to belt the umpire. They have to accept the fact that the government is in power and, as you correctly pointed out at the beginning of question time, Madam Speaker, we have the opportunity to appoint the Speaker. We have done so. When you are in the chair, you are exercising the impartiality that any Speaker should exercise. That is not an excuse for Labor, who lost the election, to decide that attacking the umpire is a better past time than actually addressing their own failures as a government for six years and now as an opposition.

That is one reason why this is an important motion. It is important to restore integrity to the role of Speaker. When an egregious falsehood has been made against the Speaker, when a gross calumny has been visited on the Speaker and has been proven to be a gross calumny, the right course of action is to come into the House and immediately apologise, explain that you may have acted under incorrect information. Now that the information has been provided to you, you withdraw and apologise. That is the way that you maintain integrity in the umpire. If the opposition are allowed to continue to denigrate and to bully the speakership then they denigrate the entire parliament. So I am trying to give the Manager of Opposition Business the opportunity in this motion, Madam Speaker, to apologise to you and to demonstrate that he has some respect for the office of Speaker and for the parliament.

The second reason this motion is important is because I was a Manager of Opposition Business for almost five years. The relationship between the Speaker and the Manager of Opposition Business is somewhat symbiotic. When I was the Manager of Opposition Business, I always tried to maintain a cordial relationship with the Speaker, to treat them with respect in the chamber, whether it was the member for Chisholm, the former member for Scullin or the former member for Fisher. If the relationship breaks down between the Manager of Opposition Business and the Speaker to the extent that this relationship has broken down, or is in the process of breaking down, then the Manager of Opposition Business's position becomes entirely untenable. So I am giving him the opportunity to apologise to the Speaker. I am not asking him to apologise for all the other insults and offensive statements that he has visited on you in the last nine months. But he should apologise to you for falsely accusing you of something and trying to refer it to a Privileges Committee, and for not having done his homework. He should apologise to you and if he does not apologise to you then he should resign. If he does not resign then the Leader of the Opposition should show the strength of character and leadership that is required in the leader of a great political party and sack him, and replace him with someone who does know how to hold the high office of Manager of Opposition Business.

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