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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4462 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

assembled masses whether you thought it was a good question or a bad question asked in question time. It is not your job to comment on whether or not you like the points that someone has made in a speech. It is not your job to advise a Minister on how to answer a question in question time. It is your job to uphold the standing orders and to ensure good order in the house.

It is not your job to work out your frustration about your lack of opportunity to express your political opinions by expressing them from the chair. That is an act of bias. It is an abuse of the privileges of the Chair. It degrades the office of Speaker and it degrades this place. It is the kind of behaviour which would not be tolerated in chairing a P and C meeting or any other meeting. But you think that in the parliament in this place - in a sense, the greatest committee or assembly in this place, apart from the Federal Parliament, of course - you can abuse standards which would be applied by any self-respecting chair of any committee at any level in the community, Mr Speaker. That is a measure of how low a standard you have set for this place.

The role of a Speaker, the role of a chair, in this place is to uphold the standing orders. It is to uphold consistent standards which will ensure that all members in this place have the opportunity to discharge their responsibilities. Mr Speaker, in indulging your own opinions, in acting with bias, in kowtowing to this Chief Minister, in prosecuting Liberal Party agendas to get Mr Berry or anybody else, you have brought this place into disrepute. I believe, and members on this side believe, that it is time that we found ourselves a Speaker who is willing to do the job in an impartial way, who is willing to do the job in a way which would uphold standards in this place, which would elevate the standards of the Assembly, which would place us in a good light in the community, Mr Speaker, because, quite frankly, we are sick and tired of the bias and the weakness which you show.

Mr Speaker, I have to say that this is a matter which not just I but members on the crossbenches ought to take very seriously. Members on the crossbenches are very fond of editorialising about how they believe a new standard should apply, about how we should get away from the style of politics that is based on winner take all, about how we should have an approach to politics which is based on collective ideas and cooperation. That style of politics is not going to be possible while we have a Speaker like you, who does not understand the difference between his private political opinions and his role as Speaker in this Assembly.

Mr Speaker, it is not surprising, perhaps, that you are letting standards go. If opinion polls are to be believed, you will not be here after February, and perhaps you are deciding to let your hair down and have a good time for your last couple of weeks in the Assembly. But, Mr Speaker, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to your own self-respect, you owe it to this institution, not to give vent to your frustrations as your term as a member of parliament comes to a close, not to act in a biased way, and not to look after the Chief Minister.

You owe it to yourself, you owe it to this place and you owe it to the Canberra community to uphold the standards of the office of Speaker, the standards in this place, and to be an example of how parliamentary processes should work. They should not work in the way you have made them work. They should not be about jumping when the

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