Page 1492 - Week 05 - Thursday, 7 April 2005
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At first blush—and the minister would make the point—it is all argy-bargy that we make arrangements and come to deals all the time, except that it is never for a personal benefit. It is inevitably to amend a bill or to change something that, in theory, benefits the people of Canberra. What was offered here was a place on a committee.
Places on committees of this place are limited, so they are highly sought after. They offer a venue for members to extol their philosophies or policies and they offer, in some cases, prestige. In some cases, if you manage to score the chairmanship of a committee—if you are elected as chair—it may offer financial remuneration. In this case, to barter for a position on a committee, we believe, is significantly different. If you look at House of Representatives Practice and at Odgers, the situation is significantly different in terms of what we do in the normal course of events here.
This is what happened: we had an arrogant government which said, “You have nothing to fear from us; no problems here; it is going to be business as normal”—except that we already have this litany of changes occurring. We have the restricting of the times, the applying of a gag to debate, the stacking of committees and now rorting of the estimates committee membership so that the government controls it, in breach of the traditions of this place.
Parliaments are run by two things—their standing orders and their traditions and practices. We do not have a traditions and practices document for this place yet. I understand it is being written, but we may need to cancel that contract because all the traditions and practices of this place have been thrown out in the last six months. It seems like a waste of money.
The point is that, if you look at what is in House of Representatives Practice and what is in Odgers, you will see quite clearly that asking somebody to change their vote in this way so that you get a benefit and offering members a benefit for changing their vote is, in fact, an inducement. That is what we are talking about today.
We have had the affair in the federal parliament whereby a member was supposedly offered a position overseas. The Metherell affair also comes to mind, where a member was offered an inducement. I think it is indicative of corrupt behaviour. That is why we have been forced to go today to this matter of no confidence in the minister.
Members opposite wanted something and they did not want to go through the political ire of just being seen to be arrogant—and people would know that they are arrogant—by simply taking control of the committee because they have the numbers, so they came up with this ruse, this subterfuge, to gain control of the committee by hiding behind the vote of the Greens. That is the problem.
We need to know whether that is truly acceptable. I think that any reasonable reading of pages 709, 710 and 711 of House of Representatives Practice clearly says that it is not. A benefit is being received in a personal sense. That is the problem here, and that is what we wanted to discuss, ideally in a privileges committee, because that is where it should be done appropriately.
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