Page 1263 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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You are quite happy to preside in that chair, to sit there high and mighty while the majority of members in this chamber speak, while they refer to this case in some detail and while Ms Gallagher says that “the government do not support in any way the incident that occurred at CSIRO last month”, and that is somehow okay. There is no crime committed there, Mr Speaker, is there? Mr Seselja and I had the audacity to get up last week and point out the hypocrisy of the act that you will not condemn Greenpeace for violent protests. By your definition, when you were talking about the Pace egg farm, you outlined that it was somehow violent protest, because your point, Mr Speaker, and what you said last week in regard to Pace egg farm was that you do not condone violent protest. And then you outlined what violent protest was and what peaceful protest was. You said that anything that results in property damage or vandalism is violent protest.
At the CSIRO $300,000 worth of property damage had occurred, there was vandalism and there were traumatised staff. You refused to condemn that. You said: “In principle, I don’t support it. I will always condemn it.” We then said, “Hang on; this is entirely contradictory.” We said: “Why is it that you are condemning what happened at the Pace egg farm but you are not condemning what happened at CSIRO, where people have been found guilty? How can that be the case?” And you still refused. We said we would grant you leave to stand up and say, “I do condemn it.” The government already have. They did it on 16 August. They said that the government in no way supported this action.
I certainly support Mr Seselja’s moving dissent from your ruling. There are two issues here. One is that there is an absolute contradiction between what happened on 16 August, when we all spoke and it was okay, and what happened last week, when somehow it was sub judice. I do not understand the difference between the two. Maybe you could explain that to us, Mr Speaker—why one is completely ignored by you, but when it gets a little bit sensitive, when it is a little close to the bone, when we point out the fact that you have been a hypocrite, woe betide us because, with your colleague here, Mr Corbell, you come down with your rain of hell on us.
The second issue goes to that point. You are the person that sits in that chair to rule—as I am pointing out, inconsistently and with great hypocrisy because you are the person who is trying to perform two roles. You are speaking over in that chair and making these ridiculous comments about condemning actions and then refusing to condemn the CSIRO, and then you sit up there and, when you do not like what is being said, you try and muzzle Mr Seselja and me.
Mr Speaker, what I would suggest to you is that you reconsider your ruling, examine what happened on 16 August and come back into this place and either say, “Well, yes, I did rule back then that it was okay and I made a mistake then,” or say, “I have made a mistake now.” You could try and explain why you are being so inconsistent. Until you are able to do that, it is very difficult for us on this side of the chamber to take this ruling, and perhaps any of your future rulings, with any form of sincerity.
Either you completely missed the debate on 16 August—and that is negligence; that is incompetence—or you chose to say: “I will just ignore that one. We all spoke on that
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