Page 2246 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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crossbench do not want to hear Mr Gentleman’s matter of public importance. In the time that I have been the whip, over the term of two Assemblies, there has been a longstanding agreement that on private members’ days no matters of public importance are raised.
Private members’ days are devoted to the business already listed by private members. Matters of public importance are another aspect of private members’ business, which we have had. Incidentally, it was just a gentlemen’s agreement that we would not have a matter of public importance on this day. But today we see the Labor Party in full flight flouting the conventions. The Liberal Party has made it very clear over and over again how we will comply with the gentlemen’s agreements in this place. One of them is there will be no matters of public importance on Wednesdays, which is private members’ day. I have made it clear over and over again in correspondence with the government whip and in this place how we stand with pairs. There has never been a pair asked for or conceded in a committee at any time.
Today we want to close Mr Gentleman down because he cannot stick to a gentlemen’s agreement. We have had this debate over and over again. It is interesting to learn from Mr Speaker today that Ms Goody Two Shoes, the acting whip, who has been saying, “I do not know how this possibly happened,” connived to bring on this matter.
The attempts by the Labor Party to close down private members’ business go on without end. We have seen Mr Gentleman breaking the gentlemen’s convention. Ms Porter, the acting whip, has not been sticking to the rules and agreements reached between the whips in this place. For that reason I have moved to suspend standing orders, so that we can close down Mr Gentleman. There is plenty of other business that has been already listed in the agreed form at the listing meeting of the administration and procedure committee.
We have decided on a number of occasions that we would not have matters of public importance on a Wednesday. We do not wish to hear Mr Gentleman. This is not to say that his matter may not be important, but he can list it for consideration, with every other person, when the time comes on a Tuesday or a Thursday, as is the convention.
This is the warning to the Labor Party: if they choose to throw out the conventions, they will pay the price. They are the people who need pairs. They are the people more than anyone who will suffer because of the throwing out of these conventions. They need to think very seriously. At this stage we need to close down Mr Gentleman so that we can get on with the business of the house, which has been duly listed.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Planning) (3.28): Today the Liberal Party is proposing an absolutely extraordinary, I think unprecedented, situation—a motion to suspend standing orders to require a member not to speak in this place. That is what the Liberal Party is proposing today. It is an unprecedented step, Mr Speaker.
Yes, tensions are high in this place at the moment. They are high because the other side has sought deliberately to obstruct a member of the government from participating in a fair and reasonable way in an Assembly committee. It is little wonder that my colleagues are a little bit annoyed about that. One of our members was forced to return from a
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