Page 1266 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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practice that the Clerk does review things and come back. But in this case the words are in the Hansard from the debate last week. What if the sentencing had been done on Friday? Having this moved today would then be superfluous in many ways.
That is the problem with applying retrospectivity in this particular case. These debates, under the discretion of the chair, are either allowed or disallowed at the time. We do not believe that it is appropriate to come back in the later instance and say: “We are going to apply continuing resolution 10 now. I, as Speaker, will now apply continuing resolution 10 because the Deputy Speaker got it wrong last week. The Deputy Speaker should have been awake. The Deputy Speaker should have intervened. The Deputy Speaker should have ruled it out of order then.” Well, it was not. One can only assume that whoever was in the chair at the time exercised their discretion. If they did not do it then, it means they were asleep in the Speaker’s chair, and of course that would be unacceptable.
This dissent should be agreed to. Otherwise, with anything that somebody wants to bring back and have a resolution of continuing effect applied to, we will be constantly coming back and saying: “I should have done it then. It should have been done better.” That might be the case, but that is no reason to apply it today, and it is certainly no reason to apply it in this manner.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation) (10.35): I agree with Mr Smyth: this is about discretion. But it has got more to do with the lack of discretion of the Leader of the Opposition and Mr Hanson in their contributions to the debate. It really goes to the point that so desperate are the Leader of the Opposition and Mr Hanson to make this political point against you, Mr Speaker, in your role as a member of the Assembly, that all discretion goes out of the window.
Everyone else managed to contribute to the debate without putting themselves at risk of breaching continuing resolution No 10. Everyone else was able to make a discreet contribution. But for Mr Seselja, it would appear that such is his personal vendetta against you, Mr Speaker, that he loses judgement, he loses the ability to exercise discretion when it comes to these matters and he just sprays in your general direction. It is not the first time he has done it. It is not the first time his lack of judgement has been on display in this Assembly. We see it again here. We see it in the response to this: it is everyone else’s fault; everyone else is responsible.
There is this confused position from Mr Hanson and then Mr Smyth about whether in fact anything wrong has occurred. Mr Hanson says, “No, not at all.” Then Mr Smyth gets up and goes, “Well, yes, it probably has, but the Deputy Speaker at the time apparently should have used discretion then.” That is really the heart of the matter, Mr Speaker—the lack of discretion, the lack of judgement and the lack of capacity to make a political point without going as far as he and his colleague Mr Hanson have done in this instance. We know their passion to pursue you on this particular issue, Mr Speaker; we have seen it many times. But what we have also seen is a lack of judgement, a lack of discretion.
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