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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4476 ..

MS McRAE (5.14): Mr Speaker, I would like to express no confidence in you today because you have lost control - not because of some of the other arguments about bias, personal attributes or your capacity to editorialise, but because you have lost control. Before I begin, I will quickly comment on the points raised by Ms Tucker. The business of feeling good or bad about things is not the business of being in a parliament. Ms Tucker, Ms Horodny, Mr Moore and Mr Osborne have the opportunity at any time to raise points of order. It is through points of order that we express opinions about how things are progressing in the house and whether things are within or without the limits.

We have never heard a point of order from Ms Tucker, which she could have taken at any time, to say, "Mr Speaker, I am finding the level of noise in this house offensive". We do hear that from time to time from the Government, and that is how they exert control. We often have points of order very carefully taken by Mr Moore to strategically control debate. That is what we are here for. They are the tools that we have at our disposal. When members of parliament do not hear points of order about their behaviour, they take a cue from that that their behaviour is acceptable. That is how parliaments work. That is what points of order are for. They are not there for members to feel good or feel bad or to react emotionally or not emotionally. They are very clear-cut ways to deal with setting standards. It is a bit rich now to be told that the standards we have are unpleasant for some members of the Assembly, when they have before them the tools to deal with that at any time.

The argument put was, "We never knew you had a problem with question time". Give me a break! How many points of order have we taken on the relevance of the answer to the question or the length of the answer? Even Mr Moore has been heard many a time pointing to the standing order that requires conciseness. It is our collective responsibility to uphold the standing orders of this parliament and to give the Speaker some level of guidance as to what is acceptable.

People have made comment about my previous tolerance of noise. May I put on record that I tolerated a high level of noise because that is what the parliament accepted. It was clearly acceptable to the majority of the members. A Speaker is the servant of the parliament, not the tyrant that dominates. Therefore, I put it to everybody that this debate today is useful to point out that it is up to us collectively, the 17 of us or however many of us are back next time, to set the standards and to give the Speaker clear guidance on what is and what is not acceptable. The Speaker is the servant of the house, may I repeat, not the tyrant.

I join in supporting this very serious motion, the implications of which I understand, because I believe the Speaker has lost control. That was the basis of my interjection about the Speaker warning interjectors. I know that Mr Osborne and Mr Moore get a different picture, but from this side of the house justice is not seen to be done. It is as important to have justice seen to be done as it is to have justice actually executed. When it is glaringly obvious day after day that the glare goes up from the Chief Minister and the Speaker actually notices it, this side of the house gets agitated. In previous parliaments, previous Chief Ministers also glared at Speakers, but some Speakers did not see the glare. That is the big difference. That is why there is major concern and why you

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