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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2644 ..
MRS DUNNE
(continuing):witness before the Estimates Committee, he has no right to say, "I'll allow you to ask me that question."He has every right to say, "I can't answer a question for a particular reason. I can answer this question, and I can't answer that."But he has no right to come in and pre-emptively say, "I will not answer a whole range of questions."
If this is allowed to stand, we run the risk of creating a precedent. I am not an expert in these things, but I am a student of history and I have spent a lot of time in past lives studying these things and we will create a precedent whereby a minister can say, "I will or won't do something."There will now be a precedent. Members of Congress come before congressional hearings and say, "I won't answer that. I'll call the fifth."Somewhere along the line, in a parliament somewhere in this country, someone is going to be asked a question and say, "No, you can't ask me that. I'm going to rely on the Wood defence. I'll call the Wood."
That is what will happen. If this is allowed to stand, we will have created a precedent whereby any time a minister does not want to deal with a particular set of questions he can come in and pre-emptively say, because Bill Wood did it and got away with it in 2003 in the ACT Legislative Assembly, "I won't do that,"and the precedent will have been set by Bill Wood.
Mr Speaker, this goes to the heart of Westminster government. This is the sort of thing that has created crises in governments over generations. This is the reason that the King or Queen cannot enter the House of Representatives. This is the reason that the King or Queen cannot enter the House of Commons. It is because of attempts by the Crown, or in this case the executive, to exert unnatural and unreasonable power over the parliament. This is why Charles I lost his head in 1649. This is the reason-
Members interjecting
-MRS DUNNE
: Okay, I will take you back to history 304 in 1979 and Kenyon's Stuart Constitution. You might think that it is esoteric, but it is where we come from. Everything that we do is based on the precedents of things too much. Let's just look at some of the issues that are here. The Commons' freedom of speech was on the anvil in 1610, says Kenyon.Government members
: Ha, ha!MRS DUNNE
: You might think that it is unimportant, but the reason that we pulled back from the previous motion is that the principle is more important than the individual issue. He says:The Commons' freedom of speech was on the anvil again in 1610. Late in April, with the King away in Newmarket, they set about investigating the legality of a new imposition on trade latterly imposed by the government. But the King-
James I, if you don't remember-
sent the council word that he could not allow parliament to debate any aspect of his prerogative without leave, especially after it had been confirmed by a court of law. On 21 May the King returned to London and made a speech in both Houses in which he repeated his prohibition.
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