Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a brief personal explanation as I have missed a division.

Leave granted.

I will not take long. I wanted to make a personal explanation for missing a division earlier this morning. I am not seeking to have the vote retaken, but I think it is important to put on record why I was not able to get here. I was attending a function in the Mural Hall. The speeches had just started. My pager alerted me that there was a division in progress and I immediately got up and left and went to a lift to make my way down to the chamber. I stood at the lift for 30 seconds and it did not arrive, then a person nearby advised me that the lift was out of order, so I then had to find another lift to get down.

I cannot use the stairs because of an injury that I experienced last year when I was hit by a car. As a result, I am not able to use stairs. Like some of my other colleagues in the chamber, I am limited in being able to get from the upper floors to the chamber by lift. My experience is that the lifts are often slow, they are delayed and some of the lifts do not actually stop at the floors on which we are. So it is a fairly unsatisfactory process. I had the excruciating experience of turning up at the door to the Senate with about two seconds to spare, and because I cannot run I could not get there in time, so I was unable to participate in the vote.

One of the pieces of advice I have been given about how to deal with this is to work out where in the precincts of the chamber I can be to make sure that I can get back within four minutes. My view is that that is really unsatisfactory advice. I have had discussions with other colleagues, other senators, who have also indicated they have some difficulty in making it to the chamber within the four minutes that is allowed as notice of a division. I want to put on the record that I am thinking about whether or not we as a chamber—committed to proper parliamentary process and people being able to participate fully in the whole process, including divisions—extend the period from four minutes to perhaps five minutes.

The sweetest irony of all is that I was advised that maybe next time I need to think about where I can be. The function that I was attending today was actually a function in relation to social inclusion. I think it would be a real pity if in fact, as a parliamentarian, I were not able to participate in welcoming the community into the parliament and doing my parliamentary duties because I am not able to fulfil my function of doing that and also getting to the chamber on time. I just wanted to put that on the record.