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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4480 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Another furphy that was raised in the course of the debate was that the Opposition has never raised concerns about the performance of the Speaker. The crossbenchers, in making these claims, appear to want us to believe they have been asleep. Clearly, that is not the case, and this is just a disingenuous fiction that they have created to justify not supporting the Opposition today. In point of order after point of order, the Opposition have raised in this place their concerns in relation to the whole range of issues that I raised in my opening remarks, from inconsistent application of standing orders to editorialising from the chair, to the application of the standing order in relation to relevance. All these matters have been consistently raised. For the crossbenchers now to say that they have never heard of any concerns we have had with the Speaker is just to beggar belief, because those things have been raised.

I am interested that Government members are willing to be so lenient about the Speaker editorialising from the chair. Needless to say, the Speaker editorialises in ways in which they would find amusing. But I am surprised to hear the Greens being so happy about his editorialising from the chair, because more often than not he is editorialising about you. I would have thought that you, more than anyone else, might have a view about the appropriateness of that. I am not talking about a humorous remark made late at night in the course of a slow debate. I am talking about editorialising in the course of question time, which is a theatre of accountability of the Government. It is not an occasion for the Speaker to wear his political slip low enough for it to be seen by those in the gallery.

Mr Speaker, it comes back to this: Proper control over this place involves a consistent application of standing orders not just by the Speaker but by all members in this place. If the Speaker and the crossbenchers will not insist on relevance by Government Ministers, if Speakers in this place will not insist on Ministers answering questions and providing the information they have been asked to provide, then the only option open to the Opposition is to interject to press home the point that Ministers are not answering questions. That is what those interjections are about. They are about pressing home the point that they are not doing their job and they are not answering questions.

When the Government has refused to provide information, we have time and again been forced to resort to motions in this place to force the Government to provide information which they should have willingly provided in response to a question. This is a matter which it is the responsibility of the crossbenchers to uphold. Time and again we have been told by the crossbenchers, "We do not want you to waste the time of the house trying to hold the Government accountable for their failure to answer questions in parliament, because we have other business we want to get on with. Do not waste our time. If you move the motion we will vote against it". While the crossbenchers refuse to uphold the forms of the place they share culpability with the Speaker for the failure to uphold the forms of the place.

This is about much more than any sense of outrage which we rightly feel about the way Mr Berry was treated today. It is about a general issue which we have raised again and again in this place. The occasion for moving this motion today was that we could not let the suspension of Mr Berry from the house pass without formally moving on this matter

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