Page 4758 - Week 11 - Thursday, 20 October 2011
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But what we did say was: “You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a half a day, talk about ordinary parliamentary business and then say, ‘We will have both items, thank you.’” That is not the way it works.
I also wanted to refer to the point Ms Bresnan made about being able to deliver on the part of the party rooms. It has been very rare that we have not been able to speak on behalf of our caucus rooms, our party rooms—very rare indeed. I would submit, Mr Speaker, that the parliamentary process which applies in admin and procedure is not being respected by those opposite.
We have the government business meeting which deals with executive business. Let us talk about the separation of powers in this place. It talks about executive business. It is talked about by the manager of opposition business, the manager of government business and the manager of crossbench business. When we talk about private members’ business, we talk about that in the context of the whips. The whips are not part of the executive. That is why admin and procedure is the perfect place for the whips to come together to discuss private members’ business.
Mr Doszpot’s business item is a private members’ item. The MPI is a non-executive piece of business. It is appropriate, Mr Speaker, that the whips come together and discuss that, not the manager of opposition business. It should be the opposition whip.
I will be raising this in the administration and procedure meeting coming up very shortly. I am going to ask how we can address standing orders to automatically place membership of the administration committee under the chairmanship of the Speaker. Quite properly then, the membership shall be the whips of the three segments of this chamber. This is to separate the powers, because quite clearly if you have got a whip from the opposition somewhere else and the manager of opposition business sitting in there, the conversation cannot work.
We saw a crystal clear example of it only yesterday. We tried our best to come to a collegiate position on this. Ms Bresnan gave a bit. I gave a bit. Mrs Dunne was not prepared to move an inch. Mr Speaker, I think that speaks very poorly of those opposite. It shows me that they cannot embrace the separation of powers. In fact, all they really want to do is to play politics with what we should be seeing as a parliamentary process. I urge this chamber to support the motion.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (3.22): The Canberra Liberals are not supporting this motion because there was no agreement in admin and procedure, nor should there be an agreement in admin and procedure. Admin and procedure is there to list business. Admin and procedure agreed to list Mr Doszpot’s item of Assembly business and there was discussion about other measures that we would take during the day. We said that we would take this back to our party rooms.
As soon as I had discussed the matter with the party rooms, I notified all of those people and the government and the manager of government business to say that we were not prepared to give up our MPI. On the other hand, we were prepared to sit until the business of the Assembly was done today. But only the Liberal Party is
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