Page 3671 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 20 October 1993
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MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (3.29): Madam Speaker, I think we might have lost the plot here a bit as an Assembly. The thing that we are debating here is the right of any member to table documents that back up or that add to a statement they make, a question they ask or a speech they make. Surely every person here would back up every Assembly person's right to table such documents in this place. It is not a matter of whether you may or may not agree with our position on this. It is a matter of the appropriateness of being able to table documents to back up a question, a speech or a statement. It is appropriate. It is parliamentary.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (3.29): Madam Speaker, Mrs Carnell seeks to divert attention from the essentially personal and spiteful attack on Mr Wright that the Opposition is engaging in here. She attempts, I suspect, to get Independent support for the proposition that they should be allowed to table these documents because it is any member's right to say anything in this house and to back it up by tabling documents. Madam Speaker, that strictly is true. It is a right protected under parliamentary privilege; but, as most members of this chamber acknowledge, that right carries with it an enormous responsibility. It is a right which, if abused in the way the Liberal Party is abusing it, gives them carte blanche to blacken reputations with smear and innuendo and to destroy individuals out there in the community.
The Government would not dispute the proposition that members have a right to say things in this chamber; but this Government would say that it is appropriate for members in this chamber to say to other members who are acting in a gutter manner, who are using that enormous power of parliamentary privilege to blacken other people's names, that enough is enough, and that in this case you should not get leave to table these documents to besmirch an individual. That is not disputing the principle that members have, under parliamentary privilege, a right to say anything; it is adding to that principle to say that that right must be used responsibly and not abused to vilify individuals who have no right of response.
Question put:
That the motion (Mr De Domenico's) be agreed to.
The Assembly voted -
AYES, 8 NOES, 9
Mrs Carnell Mr Berry
Mr Cornwell Mr Connolly
Mr De Domenico Ms Ellis
Mr Humphries Ms Follett
Mr Kaine Mrs Grassby
Mr Moore Mr Lamont
Ms Szuty Ms McRae
Mr Westende Mr Stevenson
Mr Wood
Question so resolved in the negative.
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