Page 1274 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 23 March 2010
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bad argument.” No argument from the would-be Chief Minister; no argument from the member who is going to replace Jon Stanhope as Chief Minister. “It’s just bad acting.” That is a good defence: “It’s just bad acting.” We go to Ms Le Couteur, who said it is a political agreement. If it is a political agreement, what is it doing in this place at all? Why is it tabled?
The Chief Minister said, “It’s government policy.” Mr Hanson pointed out that, from 16 press releases, a simple search of the web reveals that the government puts it in their press releases. I cannot understand why we cannot ask these questions.
Mr Hargreaves raised the point, in a speech in this place, about the role of the Speaker. It appears now that you actually speak about this agreement in Kiribati but you cannot ask questions about it in Canberra. That is wrong. That is just fundamentally wrong. You can go to Kiribati and give a speech on the nature of the Greens-Labor agreement but the Speaker unilaterally rules it out and says, “You cannot ask about the Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement in this place.” It is fundamentally wrong. Mr Speaker, perhaps you could tell us whether you got any questions at the end of your presentation. So you can ask questions about the Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement in Kiribati but you cannot ask them in the ACT Assembly. That is a joke. You laugh, Mr Speaker; I am glad you laugh, because it is a joke. That is a joke—except that it is so serious.
And that is the problem. The Speaker has closed the door. If this dissent fails, then the Speaker has closed the door about a parliamentary agreement that according to the Chief Minister will reform the Assembly and that according to the convenor of the Greens will open scrutiny. It will be a joke, because you will not be able to ask about potentially $900 million worth of housing, $35 million worth of bus routes—which, if you put the prefix in, in your agreement you seek to achieve. We cannot ask questions in that light now.
I do not know what the problem with asking those questions in that way is. I do not know what changed. Nobody has spoken today and said what changed. These questions were acceptable, as I have shown, last year when questions were asked by Mr Seselja and by Mr Coe quoting sections from the agreement. It was okay last year but it is not okay this year.
Mr Speaker, there is a question in this for you. If the Chief Minister actually tabled the document, if it has been put before this place as something that has continuing effect on how we do business, why can’t we ask questions about it? There is no logic in what you have said. It is an agreement. It is a signed agreement. You, the government and the Greens, claim it to be a parliamentary agreement. The speeches say that this parliamentary agreement affects the way the parliament operates. This agreement says that it will change the way this parliament will operate. But you have put a unilateral ban on asking questions about that.
It is interesting. We have not even gone to the detail of the document. Let us face it: section 7, “Parliamentary Staffing and Resources”. Perhaps we do not want to ask questions about the document, because it says:
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