Page 3289 - Week 10 - Thursday, 25 August 2005

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beast—the lesser spotted, sanctimonious Simon. What a performance that was, full of mock outrage and wounded ego, poor blossom.

Mr Corbell: I wish to raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Smyth knows the standing orders. If he wants to have a go at me and my conduct as minister, that is fine, but I would ask that he do me the courtesy of referring to me by my proper title and not by some inappropriate name.

MR SPEAKER: Fair point. Refer to him by his proper title.

MR SMYTH: Mr Corbell seems to have forgotten that this is a parliament, not a tea party, and that, as a matter of course, the opposition holds the deepest disdain for his abilities as a minister. Let us not forget that last year the same member—this pure aesthetic upholder of parliamentary virtue—was censured by the Assembly for persistently and wilfully misleading the Assembly. Who can forget the mislead on the issue of nursing scholarships, or the deliberate mislead on mental health funding? Best of all, the minister, the same pious parliamentarian of last night, made up a quote from Hansard.

Mr Corbell: Mr Speaker, I rise on a further point of order. Mr Smyth is suggesting that I have deliberately misled the Assembly on a number of occasions. That is highly disorderly and you should ask him to withdraw it.

MR SMYTH: You were censured for it.

Mr Corbell: No, I was not.

MR SMYTH: You were censured for persistently and wilfully misleading the Assembly.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Corbell: On the point of order: that does not entitle Mr Smyth to decide that, on every occasion when he does not agree with me, I have deliberately misled the Assembly. If he wants to refer specifically to proceedings in the previous Assembly, he should be accurate in doing that but should not cast the net wider.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you can refer to the fact that Mr Corbell has been censured but you cannot continue to declare that Mr Corbell has misled the Assembly.

MR SMYTH: That was the nature of the finding.

MR SPEAKER: I am just not going to allow this sort of stuff. This leads to disorder in the Assembly. There is no point in allowing it. There has been a motion passed in the Assembly; it is a matter of fact and you can refer to it; but I am not going to have people hurling abuse across the floor by way of accusations that are misleading, forever, because a motion has been passed, in the future. You can refer to the motion as a matter of fact but no more than that.


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