Page 2735 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 1993
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in part through his persistence that this issue has come finally before the Assembly. I also recognise that I have used the power associated with parliamentary privilege on a number of occasions. One of those was to do with the Westpac letters, and the information that followed from that revelation in this Assembly, followed by revelations about the Westpac letters in the South Australian upper house and then in a number of other parliaments, I think, was the conduit through which justice was finally delivered on that issue for a number of people.
I have used the power of parliamentary privilege on a number of other occasions. On those occasions, I have had the same difficulties that any other member has in balancing the rights of members to use that power and the responsibilities. I have always done so with uneasiness, because one is aware of the extraordinary power that a member has in naming somebody in this parliament. Mr Lamont has drawn members' attention to the example of yesterday. That example illustrates both the sensitivity of governments to the use of this power and the advantage to oppositions. The sensitivity of governments applies particularly when there is an accusation about mates. That does not apply only to the term as it is used with reference to the Labor Party. That power was seen in the instance of the New South Wales Liberal Government and what I would call the fall of Nick Greiner. It applies right across the system.
There is a greater political advantage to oppositions in particular, and I am using the term "oppositions" generically to include people on the cross benches as well. There is clearly a political advantage to people in oppositions in using parliamentary privilege, particularly when it implies that in some way or another a government has been involved in a situation concerning the appointment of a mate or something along those lines. Governments are particularly sensitive to it, as they should be, and we have seen governments fall because of that, although not necessarily in the way Nick Greiner fell. Governments have been so sullied that at the following election they stand very little chance of winning, basically because they lose their good name. What we are talking about in this issue is people losing their good name.
That is one side of it. The other side is the responsibility of members to use this parliamentary privilege when it is appropriate. There is only one person who can make that decision, and that is the member. It is part of being elected that the member will make that decision. It may well be that 16 other members do not like what that individual member does, and I have been in that boat. It may well be that the member still decides that he or she has the responsibility to proceed.
This is not an easy area, and there are no simple solutions to the problems associated with it. What we have done in this report is attempt to provide some solutions. Mr Lamont took up the theme I mentioned publicly in the grievance debate on the Matthew Abraham show this morning when he said that it is a double-edged sword. If this report is supported, and I hope that it will be, and members provide the opportunity for named people to present their perspective on a given issue, it will also mean that members in some way will be a little more relaxed about whom they name. As Mr Lamont correctly says, in naming somebody at the moment you are aware that they have no opportunity to represent themselves. They are therefore relying on another member to come into this chamber and raise the issue again - perhaps an unpleasant issue.
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