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

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That:

(1) the House notes the statement that has been made by the Speaker and:

(a) suspends so much of the standing and sessional orders as would prevent the Honourable Member for Scullin from performing the duties of the Speaker in the House until the House agrees otherwise; and

(b) resolves to appoint the Honourable Member for Scullin to perform the duties of the Speaker in the House when the Speaker is absent from the House.

Leave not granted.

In the absence of leave not being granted, I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Sturt from moving the following motion forthwith:

(1) That the House notes the statement that has been made by the Speaker; and

(2) Suspends so much of the standing and sessional orders as would prevent the honourable member for Scullin from performing the duties of the Speaker in the House until the House otherwise agrees; and

(3) Resolves to appoint the honourable member for Scullin to perform the duties of the Speaker in the House when the Speaker is absent from the House.

Madam Deputy Speaker, this motion is not a reflection on you. The opposition believes that the clock should be restarted and that the period from 24 November to today should be repaired for the good of the parliament and the Australian people's confidence in our federal democracy. The coalition is moving this motion because we believe the integrity and standing of the parliament has been seriously damaged since former Speaker Jenkins resigned on 24 November last year and, in spite of the coalition nominating nine government members to take the chair, the member for Fisher was appointed over the objections of the opposition.

It is interesting that the Prime Minister did not want to make any comment at all on the Speaker's statement to the House on this day, one of the most unprecedented days in Australia's Commonwealth history. It is because she does not want to be seen to be associated any more with the Speaker that she chose over the member for Scullin and nine other government members. She wants to be as far away from the member for Fisher as she can be, and yet five short months ago the Prime Minister chose the member for Fisher over the member for Scullin and nine members of her own caucus. This motion gives her the opportunity to explain herself to the House, to speak following me in the chamber.

The standing of parliament and of politicians has never been lower in the eyes of the Australian public, starting with the backroom deals in late 2010 by the Prime Minister to secure government, the alliance with the Greens and the breach of faith with the Australian people over the promise not to introduce a carbon tax. This was followed by the Prime Minister's failure to require the member for Dobell to make a full explanation to the parliament over the scandal that has engulfed him over his time as National Secretary of the Health Services Union. It took the Prime Minister until 10 days ago to take action over the member for Dobell and she still intends to accept his vote in the chamber. The member for Dobell will continue to prop up her government. The member for Dobell is not good enough for the ALP caucus but is good enough for the Australian parliament.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Manager of Opposition Business is straying from his own motion and I would ask him to return to it.

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

I am, Madam Deputy Speaker. The reason I am pointing these matters out is because it is very important for the public to know why the opposition believes that the standing of parliament is now so low that we want to see the clock restarted back to 24 November last year when this whole sorry period began. More recently the Prime Minister's choice to replace Speaker Jenkins—that is, the member for Fisher—has been required to stand down as Speaker while allegations of fraud against the Commonwealth are investigated by the AFP and civil claims of sexual harassment involving him are tested in the Federal Court.

What the parliament needs right now is a Speaker who has demonstrated fairness, honour and the respect for the House before. That man is sitting in the House right now. Without reflecting on you at all, Madam Deputy Speaker—as the member for Chisholm and the Deputy Speaker you have been thrust into this unhappy mess, this unedifying circus, through no fault of your own—that man is the member for Scullin. This motion reflects the orthodox reading of the Australian Constitution and our responsibilities as members of parliament.

While the standing orders allow for the Deputy Speaker to take the chair if asked to do so by the Speaker or in the absence of the Speaker, they also provide for the Deputy Speaker to be Acting Speaker and that is not the case in the arrangement is being contemplated here. The arrangement contemplated here is that the member for Fisher remains Speaker, continuing to hold the office with its salary and emoluments for an indeterminate period, while the Deputy Speaker is not officially the Acting Speaker but is simply filling in for an indeterminate absence. This is not good enough for the opposition and it should not be good enough or satisfactory for the government or the crossbench members of the House. This arrangement does nothing to repair the standing of the House of Representatives or all of us as members of it. Section 36 of the Constitution requires the House to choose a member to perform the Speaker's duties should he be absent. The motion I am moving today fulfils our responsibilities and demonstrates to the Australian people that we here are taking the necessary first steps to restore the integrity and standing of the parliament. All members should want to support it. No-one in the House could be deaf to the feelings of revulsion and horror in our electorates over the current low standing of this parliament. The cause of this low standing has been the single-minded determination of this Prime Minister to gain and hold power at any cost, which reached its nadir with the despatching of Speaker Jenkins and the suborning of a coalition MP, the member for Fisher, to be Speaker. Do not take just my word for it, Madam Deputy Speaker; the former longstanding Clerk of the Senate, Mr Harry Evans, wrote in the Financial Review:

The Slipper affair, consisting of his elevation to the speakership of the House of Representatives as a manoeuvre to improve the government's numbers, followed by his standing aside under the cloud of serious allegations of illegality and impropriety, is rightly regarded as a low point in partisan politics.

Then we have this statement:

When I resigned the party's leadership in 2005, I was convinced its core values—

those of the Labor Party—

were being corroded by the growth of factionalism and union control.

…   …   …

Unhappily, my 2005 prophecy has been fulfilled. The erosion of Labor's moral core now has a public face: its association with Thomson and Slipper. I cannot imagine anything more gut-wrenching for the party faithful, the salt-of-the-earth types who grew up with the legends of working class decency under Ben Chifley and John Curtin.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Manager of Opposition Business will return to the suspension before the chair.

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

Those were the statements of Mark Latham, the former member of the once great Labor Party. Then we have Michelle Grattan, not always known to be a supporter of the coalition—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Manager of Opposition Business needs to refer to why a suspension is required.

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

Madam Deputy Speaker, this is the most urgent matter before the House and that is why standing orders must be suspended, because the integrity of the parliament has been so damaged and traduced, and I am pointing out to the House why it is that this matter should take precedence over all other matters today until it is resolved. Michelle Grattan, writing in the Age, said:

When Peter Slipper's alleged behaviour has the community's hair standing on end, the PM cut to the core. 'Having Mr Slipper be Speaker has enabled the government to do some important things on behalf of Australian families,' she declared. In other words, Slipper has strengthened the government's numbers. Never mind the means. Think of the ends.

Michelle Grattan went on to say:

The government has entered a sort of no man's land. The atmosphere is reminiscent of those weeks in 1975, under the Whitlam government, when no-one was sure of what would happen.

This morass is entirely of this Prime Minister's making. There was absolutely no necessity for the Prime Minister to despatch Speaker Jenkins on 24 November last year and put the member for Fisher into the speakership except for one motivating reason: her desire to hang on to power at all costs. And we are paying the price. Now is the time for ALP members of good conscience—and they do exist—to search their consciences and realise that the best hope for the Labor Party's future is to turn their faces against the politics of sleaze and greed and power at all costs and to vote to restore—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Manager of Opposition Business has completely strayed from the suspension.

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

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am pointing out why the suspension should be carried, because this is the opportunity to restore the integrity of the parliament by voting for this motion, and I call on any member of good conscience on the Labor side who are hanging their heads rather than facing this suspension motion today to put the parliament first and to protect the interests of the Labor Party's future by supporting this motion.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I second the motion. It is vital that standing and sessional orders be suspended so that procedures can be put in place in order that the honourable member for Scullin resume the duties of Speaker until the House otherwise agrees. The standing orders need to be suspended because the House of Representatives risks a crisis, and this crisis has at its heart an act of betrayal and dishonesty.

The Prime Minister needed to break her written agreement with the member for Denison and sought a dishonourable way of manipulating the numbers on the floor of the parliament. It is this dishonourable act that has brought us to this extraordinary position today, where for the first time in our history the Speaker has stood down in such unprecedented circumstances, leaving a vacuum at the heart of parliamentary democracy in this country. It was remarkable that the Prime Minister made no statement in the House in response to the Speaker's statement at two o'clock today. These are unprecedented events. In the past Speakers have been absent from their duties due to illness or parliamentary travel overseas. I am not aware of any circumstance where a Speaker has stood down pending a civil trial and a criminal investigation. We have a situation where the Speaker cannot perform his duties and cannot participate on the floor of the House as a consequence. We need to suspend standing orders because it is unseemly to leave this House in such limbo. This is the consequence of the squalid manoeuvre engineered by the Prime Minister to cling to power in a hung parliament. If there is an honourable way and a dishonourable way, this Prime Minister's instinct is to choose the dishonourable path.

The integrity of the role of the Speaker, the Speaker's role to uphold the dignity of the House, has been trashed by a desperate Prime Minister's concern about her job and the numbers she needs on the floor of the House—first to break her agreement with the member for Denison and then to cling to office. The House needs to suspend standing orders to find a way to bring back the dignity of the office to restore some semblance of respect and regard for an office that has been misused and abused by the Prime Minister and this government, and that way is best exemplified by the honourable member for Scullin, who conducted himself at a high standard when he was the Speaker and who carried out his duties responsibly and professionally until he was manoeuvred out of his elected position.

It is well known that the coalition did not wish to see the honourable member for Scullin move from the position of Speaker. Indeed, when the member for Scullin, as Speaker, faced a crisis over the naming of a certain member of the House, it was the Leader of the Opposition who could have taken advantage of the chaotic situation but who instead acted promptly by moving a motion of confidence in the honourable member for Scullin as Speaker. I note that it was not the Prime Minister—a member of the same political party—who did that but the Leader of the Opposition, who understands the traditions of the chamber and the importance of protecting the dignity of the House of Representatives and the office of Speaker.

We need to suspend standing orders to debate this motion because the people of Australia are right royally sick of the trashing of our national institutions that they are seeing on a weekly basis under this government. The trashing of the proper processes of the House is only one in a long list of the government's calamitous destruction of the integrity of government tender processes, like that of the Australian Network, the interference in so-called independent inquiries by Fair Work Australia, the use of the National Broadband Network for political advertising and political favouritism—the list goes on.

Standing orders need to be suspended so that the honourable member for Scullin, one of the people in the parliament who commands widespread support for doing the job of Speaker, can once again resume the duties that should never have been stripped away from him by a manipulating Prime Minister. We regret that the member for Scullin was forced to resign his position by this scheming Prime Minister. Standing orders need to be suspended, for not to do so will leave a chaotic, unprecedented mess that raises major procedural questions when the House hangs on a knife's edge.

I have one final word: we ask that the crossbenchers support us in this call. For the crossbenchers to not support this call will be to prop up a squalid, manipulative arrangement that trashes the dignity of the House. I call on the members for New England, Lyne, Denison and Melbourne to think of their own integrity and their own standing as much as that of the House of Representatives. I second this motion. (Time expired)

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call on the Manager of Government Business.

Opposition members: The Prime Minister!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition, who does not have the ticker to move this motion, is in no position to declare who should speak on this motion. I will answer the Manager of Opposition Business, Mr Pyne, and this absurd, pathetic attempt to suspend standing orders, and I will do it in a way in which every word is not written down, unlike the Deputy Leader of the Opposition.

The Manager of Opposition Business said that this motion is in accordance with an orthodox reading of the Constitution. The Constitution, the standing orders and the House of Representatives Practice provide for a method of election of the Speaker and of the Deputy Speakers of the House of Representatives. They absolutely do not provide for resolutions to be moved at any time suspending standing orders so a person—any other member—can be appointed to a position to which they have not been elected above the person who has been elected, that is, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. The implementation of this motion is not even possible because it is against the standing orders, it is against the House of Representatives Practice and it is against the provisions of the Australian Constitution that provide a legal basis for the running of this parliament. Well done, those opposite. We know they have contempt for proper procedure, but to come in here and suggest that the Deputy Speaker should be deposed—the person who they moved should be the Speaker of the House of Representatives just months ago—shows the hypocrisy which is there.

They do this for the 51st time in the 43rd Parliament, and they do it on the budget day. They do it on the most important day that occurs in parliament every year, the day on which a government puts forward its economic program, its social program, its education program, its health program and its plan for infrastructure investment. Yet what do we see from those opposite? They abandon question time without a single question about the economy on budget day—an extraordinary proposition from those opposite. The Leader of the Opposition's priority is to come in here, have a suspension of standing orders and then retreat into the budget lock-up without having any debate whatsoever about the processes.

The Manager of Opposition Business went to a range of issues in his statement. The fact is this, as the Speaker as indicated: there are allegations which have been made against the Speaker. If they are true they are completely unacceptable. But there is a proper process to hear that and we here are not the courts; we here are the parliament of Australia. And when the courts consider that matter I look forward to when the Manager of Opposition Business is called to talk about what he knew about these circumstances. I look forward to Mal Brough's evidence before that proper judicial process. I look forward to what the Deputy Leader of the Opposition knew about the process, what the shadow Treasurer knew about the process and what the Leader of the Opposition knew about the process.

What we have seen over the last couple of weeks, day by day, is the information coming out bit by bit. Remember, the Manager of Opposition Business could not quite recall the conversation. Then he knew there was a conversation. Then he could not quite recall the nature of it. Then he knew it was extensive, in the Speaker's office without the Speaker there. He said this is normal practice. I say this: there are former Liberal Speakers in Hawker and Andrew, as well as former Speaker Jenkins and Speaker Slipper, whom I have served as Manager of Opposition Business and as Leader of the House, but I have never sat down in private without the presiding officer present and had a chat over a drink for a couple of hours. I have never done that, ever. The Manager of Opposition Business would have it believed that this is normal practice. It is not normal practice, nor have I emailed the Speaker's office trying to get the private phone number, email and details of a staffer of the Speaker—not any one of them, Liberal or Labor. But it all came out bit by bit. We know from the way the same language was used. They all said they had 'no specific knowledge'. They all came out with exactly the same words for what they knew about these issues. There was Mal Brough who said, when it was raised, that the suggestion was nonsense. Then we found out that he did not have one meeting, he did not have two meetings; he had three meetings and he brought a lawyer along to some of the meetings. But he had dismissed it as nonsense just a week before. We look forward to this coming out, but the appropriate place for it to come out is under the appropriate judicial processes. As I said, I am of a firm view that if any of the allegations are right and if people have engaged in criminal behaviour then that is completely unacceptable and any member of this House would dissociate themselves from those actions; it is a simple case. But people are entitled to a presumption of innocence and people are entitled to have proper processes and assessments of any charges made.

Those opposite would have you think that what the Speaker, the member for Fisher, has done today is inappropriate. It is what they asked to happen! They asked that he step aside as the Speaker whilst these issues were being investigated. That is what they asked to happen. So it has happened but they cannot say yes; they have to say no. They have to find a reason to disagree with any action, even when it is completely consistent with what they asked for.

Today of all days—the day of the budget—the opposition have exposed themselves. They simply are not interested in policy. It is all about the politics. It is always the low road, always about attacking individuals, always about trying to present themselves as judge and jury. Let me say this: if every rumour in this place about the behaviour of individuals were accepted as being absolutely correct and acted on, then it would be a pretty empty chamber, because there are a range of rumours about people on that side of the chamber that we understand should not be taken to be correct because they are made.

The reason that standing orders should not be suspended is that, on budget day of all days, we should be having a debate about the economy. I know that there is a very fine matter of public importance today from the member for Fraser about the economy—about getting the budget back into surplus, about jobs, about education and about health. I know the member for Fraser will be advancing that matter before the parliament, and there will be an opportunity for the opposition to engage in that economic debate. But if this suspension is carried we will be throwing out the Constitution, House of Representatives Practice and standing orders as if 'it's just the vibe'—Dennis Denuto over here—and can just be dismissed and anyone can be replaced. We need proper process and we also need to be engaged in the economic debate. Those opposite run away from the economic debate because they have nothing to say about the economic future of this country and they are embarrassed by the fact that this government has delivered the strongest economy in the advanced world. Right throughout the world people are saying, 'There is no place we would rather be than Australia,' and tonight we will be delivering a budget surplus.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allocated for this debate has expired. The question is that the motion by the member for Sturt be agreed to.