Page 2272 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 16 June 2009
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and an abuse of power. What he has not done is made a case—because he knows he does not have a case. This is the standard operating procedure for Mr Corbell. He gets up and he throws out the words, but if you challenge him to address the substance—in his entire speech, there was no reference to how you have broken the standing orders; and there was no reference to how you had acted not in accordance with the House of Representatives Practice, because he knows that you have.
That is the problem for this place. When the government do not like being held to account, they play the man. We see it in the Chief Minister all the time; we see it in the ministers all the time. When they cannot answer the question, they go to the man.
Mr Corbell: Relevance.
MR SMYTH: You say, “Relevance.” You did play the man. The allegations are all there. There is a clear political agenda. You accused him of being partisan; you said it was inappropriate; you said it was an abuse of form; you said it was flip-flop and ad hoc. You played the man, and you are now caught out, Mr Corbell, as so often you are caught out.
Mr Speaker, I will simply refer back to page 746 so that members can be clear about this when they vote. House of Representatives Practice says:
An opinion by the Speaker on a complaint raised under standing order 51 is not a ruling and so a dissent motion, as provided for in standing order 87, is not in order.
This motion is out of order. Mr Corbell was out of order. Mr Corbell should be invited to withdraw his accusations and his allegations and apologise to this place and to the Speaker. This vote should not be supported.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.23): Mr Speaker, what we have seen here today is the manager of government business out of control and out of his depth. What Mr Smyth has quoted is really the be-all and end-all about this argument. I will keep this quite short. An opinion by the Speaker on a complaint raised under the standing orders is not a ruling and so a dissent motion as provided for in the standing orders is not in order. It was not possible for the leader of the house, the manager of government business, to move dissent from your ruling, because you did not make one. What he did was confect a situation where you had to make a ruling that you did not make a ruling so that he could dissent from that.
This government is not prepared to go through the forms of the house. Mr Smyth is perfectly correct. When we made changes to these standing orders and created a new chapter in relation to privilege and contempt, which was voted on unanimously by the previous Assembly, Mr Corbell told how much time he personally had put into the compiling of the new standing orders and how important it was for him, as the manager of government business, to have a good grasp of the standing orders and to be involved in that process.
Somehow, Mr Speaker, he does not seem to have read about some of the most vital parts of this process. The mere fact that the Chief Minister stood up today and
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