Page 1287 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 2012

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everybody else’s fault. It’s a Greens-Labor conspiracy. They’ve all ganged up. I can’t help it. Everyone’s against me. I’m not responsible.” Come on—you are going to have to put forward some new ideas and some better ways of dealing with things. This cannot be your standard response to everything—“It’s never our responsibility. Never once.”

The standards that apply on this side of the chamber that see ministers from time to time coming in, correcting the record, making clear if they have got something wrong, taking that responsibility on, just simply do not apply over there. You can say whatever you like whenever you like, and the standing orders are only useful when they can be used as a point of political attack, never as a way of structuring debate or providing guidance on appropriate conduct in this place.

As to the line that the Assembly is gagging the Liberal Party, I do not think anyone who listens to debate in this chamber—thankfully there are not very many of them—would ever accept the view that the Liberal Party is being gagged in this place. The Assembly and the standing orders provide ample opportunity for members to talk about pretty much anything continuously, ad nauseam, in repetition, often six of the same speeches. This is the way the Assembly conducts its business. For Mr Seselja to try and run out there and have as his secondary defence that “Okay, if you don’t accept it is everyone else’s fault and not mine and it is Labor and the Greens ganging up on us, then we are being gagged and we’re not actually allowed to do the job we are elected to do” is simply another attempt at distraction by the Liberal Party.

This is about leadership; this is about appropriate standards. You have been caught out. One measure of leadership is actually taking responsibility for your actions and apologising if you get it wrong. That is something we have never seen from the opposition. I do not think we are ever going to see it.

There were several ways to deal with this matter this morning. You have chosen to come out fighting, to blame everybody else. It is everyone’s responsibility in this chamber to uphold the forms, the conventions, the standing orders, the continuing resolutions. You simply went too far. You need to be brought back into line, and that is what this motion will do today.

Question put:

That Mr Hanson’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

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