Page 1595 - Week 04 - Thursday, 25 March 2010
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this matter of standing order 156. That led to the suspension of the Assembly for a time, when there was discussion between parties. We then resumed and agreed that we would go away and during the day work on a motion which had the effect of referring to the adviser this matter around the scope of standing order 156, which deals with conflicts of interest around particularly those who are connected to members within the Assembly.
In the earlier discussion it did come up that there had been other cases, a number of cases, where this standing order had been used to exclude particular members from other debates. One, I believe, was around family members and whether family members could be employed by members of this place. I understand that it has come up at other times around the connection between the Labor Party and the Labor club because the Labor club obviously has a connection there, particularly in relation to donations.
We felt that it was timely, because it had come up on another occasion, to really get this matter sorted out. What was the application of standing order 156? Who was included? Who was not? One of the issues that came up also this morning in relation to this was that it seemed to be quite a nonsense that, if this standing order was to be applied in its wider sense, it could end up meaning that many members who might have a staff member who, for instance, serves on the board of a community organisation or an arts organisation or a sports organisation, because of the connection, would not be able to speak on matters relating to, for instance, arts funding or any particular issues that would relate to the staff member’s involvement in those organisations. The Greens really felt that that was why it was timely to move forward and have this clarified.
During the day there have been a number of discussions and negotiations between the three parties in the Assembly, and I have this final text included in my motion. As I said, it calls on the Speaker to obtain advice from the ethics and integrity adviser as to the scope of standing order 156, the extent of conflicts of interest that might arise as far as the activities of staff members of members of the Assembly are concerned or any other conflicts that might arise either directly or indirectly. We have noted what that would take into account. That could be around licence payment, contract lease or other transactions under territory law. Finally, we do want this advice provided back to the Assembly, and it is important that we get that advice if we are to move on and not come back to this question again and again as to how standing order 156 applies or may not apply in certain cases.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (5.55): Labor has serious reservations with this approach. Our reservations are that it was never, in our view, envisaged that the Assembly would first of all seek from the ethics and integrity adviser interpretations of the standing orders. It was never envisaged that they would conduct this sort of examination and provide advice to the Assembly such that it would potentially be contingent on a decision about how a certain matter would be determined in the Assembly. It is quite an extraordinary precedent for the Assembly to establish.
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