Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased and, indeed, proud to defend my colleague the member for Watson and the Manager of Opposition Business. They say: why am I speaking on this? This is not an attack on the member for Watson—you attack one, you attack all! This is an attack on the Labor Party. This is an attack on the opposition and this is an attack on the democratic institution of this parliament. If this motion is carried, then any future government by a majority vote can determine that a member of the opposition, who by definition will lose any vote, can be required to come on and take certain actions.

We were in government six years—that never happened. You were in government for 12 years—that never happened. That shows how desperate you are. What you are confirming today is that you had a plan to get into government but you certainly do not have a plan to govern. You would rather talk about anything else than the health cuts, the education cuts, the changes to pensions, the public transport cuts, the attack on economic growth—your pathetic budget of broken promises just two weeks ago.

We were told by those opposite that the adults were going to be back in charge. This is the most childish student-politics stunt that I have seen in this parliament since 1996, a desperate government desperate to defend the Speaker and her right to continue to hold that position. In order to have the confidence of the House, you have to be accountable to this House, Madam Speaker, and what the member for Watson did yesterday was raise, quite correctly and completely in order with the standing orders, a question to you about how many times your office had been used to raise money for the Liberal Party.

You refused to answer that. You refused to be accountable to this parliament and, hence, the member for Watson then went to the next step, which is to ask you whether that constituted a breach of privilege by using the Speaker's office to raise partisan money for the Liberal Party on budget night—and who knows how many other nights it had been raised. We know that extra crockery had to be ordered into your office the night before budget night. We know that was the case. But the Manager of Opposition Business, quite correctly and in accordance with standing orders, raised the question.

Under any circumstances it would have been reasonable to say, 'I am directly involved in this, so I will just refer it off. I will not make a ruling,' but you chose not to do so. You chose to make a ruling and to say that you were not going to refer it. So then the Manager of Opposition Business moved a motion. Under any previous circumstances, it would have been reasonable to say—as we did when we were the government—'Okay, let them have a look at it.' Yet that was voted down. Then the Manager of Opposition Business wrote to the Privileges Committee and they have said, 'We cannot even consider whether we will consider it because of that resolution.' It is absolutely extraordinary.

Today of course we finally saw someone from that side ejected from the parliament. Interesting that it was the same day that this motion has come and I am not clear whether you had advance notice of this motion coming, but I would be surprised if this was a spontaneous outburst from the Leader of the House. The member came in before one hour was up, but that was all okay as well, contrary to all the precedent that is there.

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