Page 1852 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 June 2014
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orders set out a process, which has been well established for a significant period of time, for redress for ordinary citizens for comments made under privilege in this place. The Assembly has established these mechanisms recognising that, in circumstances where members use privilege to make attacks on individuals who do not have the protection of privilege, they have the ability to reply to those attacks. That is what this citizen’s right of reply is—it is redress. It is redress for Mr Gardner because of the attacks on his character and conduct made under privilege by members of the Liberal Party.
The Standing Committee on Administration and Procedure has endorsed in accordance with the procedures set out in the standing orders Mr Gardner’s proposed right of reply. The question before us now is that that right of reply be incorporated into Hansard so that it, too, has the protection of privilege. This is not a right granted lightly or often by this place, but there is a clear and established procedure to allow citizens to reply when their character has effectively been defamed, and that is what has occurred in this place.
Mr Hanson’s comments and the comments of his colleagues are most effectively characterised by the last paragraph of Mr Gardner’s proposed right of reply, where he says:
Members of the ACT Legislative Assembly should be made aware that their words about non-elected, ordinary members of the public whether negative or positive carry weight. Scoring political points at the expense of someone’s career and well-being was never the intended use of privilege and certainly doesn’t live up to the high standards that I, as a citizen of the Australian Capital Territory, expect from my elected representatives.
That is exactly the reason this report should be adopted. What is the point of delaying that inevitable consequence? Are you going to seek to have it not adopted? Are you going to say that Mr Gardner is not entitled to reply to the defamatory attacks you made on him under the protection of parliamentary privilege? That is the question before this place. You should accept that as an ordinary citizen Mr Gardner is entitled to have his response placed on the public record and given the same protection that you enjoy in your attacks on him.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (12.22): Madam Speaker, as Mr Smyth has indicated, I was temporarily on the Standing Committee of Administration and Procedure to hear this matter. Neither the opposition nor I have any problem whatsoever with a citizen being given the opportunity for a right of reply. That is right and proper. But in the same way that every committee receives submissions and then scrutinises those submissions to make sure they are not defamatory and are appropriate to go on the website, that is what the Assembly should be doing as well. We are not saying he should not have a right to reply, but we should not simply be saying that everything in this document is all good to go on the record of this Assembly.
It is for that reason that continuing resolution 4 (7) states:
In its report to the Assembly on a submission under this resolution, the Committee may make one of the following recommendations … (b) that a
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