Page 488 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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You are interrupting the standing orders. The standing orders provide for question time, presentation of papers and then an MPI. You say that it is unprecedented and unheard of for question time to be interrupted; hence this motion could not be brought on before question time because, as we know, question time is sacrosanct. I am just trying to recall whether it was Mr Smyth in the last Assembly who asked a question and then moved a censure motion after the first question. Who was it that moved the censure motion on that occasion after the first question?
Mr Smyth jumped up and asked one question—the great irony of it is that it was a question of Mr Corbell—and moved to censure Mr Corbell after a single question. But now he says that it is unprecedented that question time should in any sense be interfered with by a motion. Mr Corbell’s point was well and truly made. Mr Smyth’s rebuttal of the point is an absurd nonsense.
Today is a day for executive business. Executive business should be allowed to run. If you want to interfere with executive business on executive business day, then there is a consequence. This could have been done tomorrow. Really, if we do not get through executive business today, we should do it tomorrow. Will you agree to that? If we do not actually get through the legislation on the program today, are you happy for us tomorrow, at 10 o’clock, to move to suspend standing orders to allow executive business to be brought on forthwith?
In the context of your argument, you are happy with that, are you, that tomorrow, at 10 o’clock, we go straight to executive business that is not concluded today? That is the position that the government will be putting at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for Disability and Housing, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Corrections) (3.04): Essentially, Mrs Dunne just said, “Well, the suspension of standing orders is to interrupt the procedures and that’s fine because that’s what they’re for.” In fact, that is not so. The reason we are having this debate on the motion to suspend standing orders is because Mrs Dunne did not get her own way when she sought leave to move the motion in the first place. She did not get leave. So, it was, in fact, a bit of a dummy spit. It had nothing to do with parliamentary process at all. It was just a dummy spit.
Mrs Dunne tried to make a point about the seriousness of the issue and then hung her hat on the standing orders as being the way to progress the matter. If one has a good look at the standing orders to find out what has precedence and what does not, MPIs have precedence and executive business has precedence.
Mr Hanson: It was Mr Corbell who raised the standing orders.
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Hanson, you ought to read the standing orders. They are in English, just to let you know.
Standing order 81 deals with a motion of no confidence in the Chief Minister. That is the motion that takes precedence, not a motion raising a matter of concern. In the past censure motions have been downgraded to motions of concern, and they have passed,
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