Page 947 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2012
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A Member may not interrupt another Member while speaking, unless …
And it lists some provisions—to call attention to a point of order, to call attention to a want of quorum and to move a closure motion. There is no other reason.
Ten to one interjections, Mr Speaker, would indicate to me a litany and a constancy of a breach of standing order 61, and by them all. But some of them are more serial offenders than others. The count here has Mr Hanson at 67 out of 151 and Mr Smyth at 32 out of 151. They are one short of 100. Those two people are responsible for two-thirds of the interjections. Those two people are responsible for nearly 100 interjections in a 60 minute debate. Mr Speaker, it is not me that needs a want of confidence moved against me. It is those opposite who need that want of confidence motion moved against them. (Time expired.)
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (5.23): I stand today to say that I do not, and the Greens do not, support this motion of no confidence in Mr Hargreaves in his capacity as Assistant Speaker. I am one of the other Assistant Speakers; so I do know how hard and frustrating the job can be at times. I must admit that I was not in the Assembly when the incident which is being reflected on occurred; so I will not speak about that because I have no personal knowledge.
However, I am aware that a discussion took place between Mr Hargreaves as Assistant Speaker and the Speaker. I understand that the Speaker made a statement about that in the Assembly and that the Speaker is taking no further action on the subject. I think that the Speaker has taken appropriate steps in regard to the situation. There is no further action to be taken from the Speaker’s point of view. I also believe there is no further action to be taken from the point of view of the Assembly.
In fact, this whole thing seems to be part of a campaign. The Liberal Party appears to be having a campaign of finding an issue with Mr Hargreaves. This really does not seem appropriate to me. None of us are perfect but this appears to me to have gone beyond reasonableness and getting close to a witch-hunt.
I will reflect on a couple of things that have been said in the debate so far. Mr Hanson said that the Liberal Party was finding it difficult to take seriously Mr Hargreaves as a Speaker. I think, actually, that is a really sad statement to make and possibly reflects some of the reasons why we have the issues we do have with behaviour in this Assembly. The issue is not anything about Mr Hargreaves. The issue in terms of respecting the Speaker is that you are not respecting the person; you are respecting the role.
When I sit up there as Assistant Speaker and I tell people to do this, that and the other, you are not doing it because you think Caroline Le Couteur is telling you that. You are doing it because you hopefully respect the role of Speaker and you respect what we are trying to do in this Assembly. So I think that it is very unfortunate that we are not only politicising the role of the Speaker and the Assistant Speaker. We are personalising it. I think both of those are regrettable tendencies.
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