Page 3223 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
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of confidence in the Speaker was a punishment that did not fit the crime—a very law-makerly sort of approach.
So we took him at his word and said, “Okay, if the government don’t think that the Speaker should lose his job over the words that he used and his failure to retract them over the course of the interceding month, what is their test? If they don’t think he should lose his job because really what we need to do is shore up the government’s support in this place, are they prepared to censure him?” Members of this place have been censured before for injudicious actions. And now the test has been put out there and again the government have failed.
They used all of these words in their speeches. The leader of the house, the Attorney-General, and the Chief Minister said that what was said by the Speaker was wrong and that the Speaker should not have condoned the actions. Then, of course, the Attorney-General came back on that and said, “Well, it hasn’t actually been proved.” It has not been proved in a court of law, that is true, but Greenpeace posted video of itself, and the spokesmen on behalf of the activists who were there went on television across this nation and went into print across this nation extolling the virtue of the actions of Greenpeace. Everybody has fessed up to it. No-one has come out from Greenpeace and said: “That YouTube video was a forgery. It wasn’t us.” Everybody admits that this is what happened. The people who spoke on behalf of the activists essentially said that they were prepared to go to court and plead guilty on this. Everyone admits that that will happen.
This Speaker here, the person charged more than anybody else in this place with upholding the law—with the possible exception of the Attorney-General, charged more than anyone in this place with upholding the law—has said, “I can’t either condemn or condone because these people have strongly held opinions.”
Let us go back to the code of conduct. I refer members to page 402 and following in the Companion to the standing orders. This is the code of conduct by which we, as members of this place, are supposed to live. The second paragraph says:
… Members agree to respect and uphold the law, not to discredit the institution of Parliament, and maintain their commitment to the public good through personal honesty and integrity in all their dealings.
This Speaker, this person who was charged by this place with upholding, more than anybody else, the standards of this place, has failed. On 666 ABC he said that he could not condemn the actions of Greenpeace. He could not condemn the actions of Greenpeace because he probably wanted to be out there himself, and that is all right for an activist. He said a whole lot of other things—that these people will possibly face the court and the full force of the law should come down against them. But he could not bring himself to condone his former colleagues. He forgot that he is no longer a member of Greenpeace. As Michael Moore said, he is no longer out there in a Zodiac, putting himself between a harpoon and a whale. That makes you a hero. But in this place the thing that makes you a hero is the hard slog of being a law-maker.
This Speaker failed that test on 14 July. We are now at 16 August—one month has gone by—and, as late as yesterday, the Speaker was still upholding his right to say
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