Page 720 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 5 April 2022
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MR RATTENBURY: He has been interjecting the whole time through the debate. This is clearly designed for show, not for the substance of the issue. We are very happy to work with Mr Hanson to have this substantive discussion at a later point in time.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MR RATTENBURY: He is continuing to heckle me right through this conversation. He was heckling the Greens throughout Ms Orr’s remarks. I do not think this is a genuine discussion about the topic at hand. It is some stunt from Mr Hanson which is, I think, not in the spirit of parliament working together on procedural issues, which is the way this place generally works.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (11.12), in reply: Mr Rattenbury just said he would be happy to have the debate. I guess that is my problem: he is not. I have tried a couple of times now. I have tried to get it through admin and procedures to get it on the notice paper. Mr Rattenbury says, “We are happy to have a debate about it.” Well, the subject of this whole motion is to have a debate about it. I cannot get it through admin and procedures to get it on the notice paper, the review has not happened and no-one has come back to us on this, and Mr Rattenbury says he is happy to have the debate but then says he is not going to support a motion that is actually about having the debate. So is Mr Rattenbury going to make a commitment that, if I bring this back next sitting week, we will have the debate? Is that what he is saying? I think that is what he said, but it is all a bit confusing.
The Greens used to support this sort of stuff. The Greens used to be about Latimer House principles and all that. Remember, Mr Rattenbury? You used to talk about Latimer House principles and so on. The opposition just wants to institute the practices of question time that occur in every other parliament in Australia, which are eminently reasonable and worked effectively through COVID. The government—the Labor Party and the Greens—will not even have the debate about it. They do not even the decency to have the debate about it. Somehow it has got to be put off to this review that has not even started yet!
What is going to happen is that that review will happen at some stage in the future, and we will find out about it probably in the last year of the term. So it is a bit of a sell-out, I would have to say, from the Greens. I am not surprised that the government, the Labor Party, do not want more effective questions asked of them. But for the Greens to sell out quite as they have, I must say is very disappointing. Whether they agree with this motion or not, to not even allow the debate, I think, is a poor step for this Assembly. I do not think it reflects well on the Greens, in particular, to refuse to even have the debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
Committees—amendment to resolution
MS BURCH (Brindabella) (11.15): I seek leave to move a motion concerning an amendment to the resolution of the establishment of committees in relation to matters referred to Assembly committees.
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