Page 2733 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 1993
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reasonably confident that this procedure will provide some appropriate way of ensuring that members exercise their rightful capacity to make comments and that they have, in a sense, some sounding board, some way of having their comments taken to task, if that is appropriate.
The second motion recommended by the committee outlines the circumstances in which members should be exercising their freedom of speech. I think we can see in that motion a succinct statement of the criteria members should use when they exercise that power. It is not a statement that flies in the face of any past practice of the Assembly, but it certainly needs to be restated in this form. I commend the motion to the house.
MR LAMONT (11.00): Madam Speaker, as a member of this Assembly newly arrived, having been elected to the Second Assembly, it is one of the great revelations to understand what parliamentary privilege is in terms of what it covers once you walk through the little blue cordon. It allows members of this Assembly to make any allegation they wish - unsubstantiated, substantiated, matters currently before a court, matters not affecting people within the ACT, matters affecting people within the ACT. It enables them to make such allegations and to pursue particular issues. It enables them, if they so choose, to embark upon personal vendettas against individuals, not only in this Assembly but also outside it.
We have attempted through the Administration and Procedures Committee to provide, in the terms that we are able to, a proper form of redress for persons who believe that they have been so maligned. On the one hand, that may present to some members of the Assembly the view that they have even more rope by which to hang others. If they make a statement, if they make an allegation, if they conduct a vendetta, obviously those people will have whatever is said about them placed on the public record and reported; on the other hand, it is all right because those people will be able to put in a letter and redress the wrong.
The simple fact is that, while the Administration and Procedures Committee has endorsed this proposal, and I personally endorse it, as a member of that committee and as a member of this Assembly, it is less than adequate in such circumstances. It is less than adequate because of one very simple fact: Once an allegation is made, once a statement is made, with the innuendo there is in some statements that are made in this house, it is too late. The integrity of the person who is named is impugned. It is impugned by association. It is impugned because in the first instance the question or statement has been raised or made. So the procedure we are discussing this morning is, in my view, a less than adequate procedure, but it is the only one I can come to grips with as enabling this Assembly to offer at least some redress to a person and/or corporation who believes that they have been unfairly treated by a statement by a member of this Assembly.
I believe that there is indeed a great obligation on members of this Assembly to be extremely careful, given that we have parliamentary privilege, given that that privilege is there in order to allow free speech, to allow elected members, unencumbered, to say those things that are in the community interest and to put points of view that are in the community interest. At times, what is in the community interest often relies on what is in the personal political interest of the person making the allegation. On a number of occasions in this Assembly
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