Page 5423 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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to amendments anymore. You would have to hope that it got passed and then you could speak to it. I am not going to speak anymore. It is an embarrassing ruling. It should be overruled.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (4.11): The only embarrassment here are the Liberal Party, who are making up amendments on the run and then seeking to use those amendments to accuse me of a whole range of other activities such as “verballing the Director of Public Prosecutions”.
If anybody in this place deserves to be sat down for an abuse of process it is Mr Hanson. Mr Hanson has proposed an amendment deliberately, and manufactured an excuse, to try and make a whole range of other unsubstantiated allegations against me. It is a serious allegation to say that I am verballing the Director of Public Prosecutions, but that is what Mr Hanson is now attempting to do in this place. It shows the paucity of the Liberals’ argument in relation to the substantive censure that they now feel that they have to throw in all of these other nefarious allegations—allegations without any substance, allegations without any basis. Those opposite are an embarrassment. And you have acted appropriately, Mr Assistant Speaker, in simply indicating to Mr Hanson that he is abusing the forms of this place, and he should not be allowed to continue to participate in the debate.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.13): Mr Assistant Speaker, we should be given leave to move dissent because, unless we get dissent in this motion, debates in this place change for all time. I refer members to the debates that occurred this morning, particularly the debate on Ms Porter’s motion on policing. Mr Hanson moved an amendment to a motion before the Assembly. We then debated this before we voted on it. What you are saying now, Mr Hargreaves, is that it is impossible for anyone to speak to their amendment until it is passed. But you cannot speak to it, so how does it get passed? Do we just move motions and amendments to motions and hope that people actually vote for them so that we can then speak to the amended motion? That is a nonsense. You have got it wrong. You should apologise and you should stand down. Mr Rattenbury then moved an amendment to Ms Porter’s motion. He spoke to it. Others spoke to it. That would not have stood either.
Mr Barr, this afternoon you foreshadowed an amendment to Mr Rattenbury’s motion on marriage equality. Under this ruling you cannot speak to that until the Assembly has agreed to it. That is what this does. You can now not speak to your amendment because Mr Hargreaves, if this is allowed to stand, has just changed the rules. And it goes on: Ms Bresnan, you will not be allowed to speak to your amendment on T2 until your amendment has been passed. That is not how it should work.
Mr Hargreaves, you have got it wrong. You should withdraw. Leave should be granted to have the dissent ruling passed and we then should get on with the ordinary forms of this place where all members are free to move amendments to motions as they see fit—to change the motion, to broaden the motion, to narrow the motion, to put targets in the motion—to do anything they want with the motion as per their amendment.
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