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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4481 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

because of the seriousness with which we regard the issues. I would urge members on the crossbenches to take these issues as seriously as we do. I am disappointed that from their contributions it would appear that they are not willing to do so.

MR SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

MS TUCKER (5.34): I seek leave to speak again, Mr Speaker.

Leave granted.

MS TUCKER: I want to respond to some of the statements of Mr Whitecross and Ms McRae in their indignant outrage about the statements we made regarding the fact that no-one from Labor has talked to us about their unhappiness with how question time was being managed. I think Mr Whitecross put his finger on it when he used the word "theatre". The impression I have is that this place is often about theatre.

I cannot believe that Labor is seriously saying that they consistently raised the same points of order every question time because they actually wanted them addressed. If they really wanted to see a change in how things were working, it would have become pretty damn obvious that what they were doing was not working. It has not worked since I have been here. If they really did want to see changes in how standing orders were interpreted in this place, their tactics obviously were not working.

I have noticed that Ms McRae says that we should be calling points of order all the time if we do not like the way things are going. I have made it quite clear that I think that interjections are not particularly useful and do not particularly enhance debate. But the point is that whenever this is raised I am told by most members of this place - in fact, I cannot think of one who has not agreed - that this is the way parliaments operate. So, we are in a parliament. I am not going to take offence because occasionally there is some harmless editorialising coming from the Chair when there is all this other nonsense going on all the time. It is all part of the theatre, apparently. I have accepted that. I have said several times already that I do not think it is particularly useful.

I heard Ms McRae say that it is the sign of a great orator. I wonder what parliament is for. It is theatre. If we had 17 great orators, would we have great outcomes for the community of the ACT? Is that what we want? If that is the case, we should have a kind of merit selection process for people who want to enter parliament to represent the community, and what you would be judged on is whether you are a great orator, not how well you are representing the concerns of the community.

This debate is getting quite absurd. If Labor had a real problem, then I cannot work out how they could possibly think they would achieve change by standing up and disturbing the proceedings consistently in this place. I could have chosen to do that. We decided not to do that. We decided it was a waste of time to be continually standing up and raising points of order, as there is then argument on this side and argument on that side - it goes on and on - and more time is wasted. We have made a decision not to do that. But I will not accept the line that this is absolutely the way it has to be because this is how parliaments work.

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