Page 5670 - Week 15 - Thursday, 10 December 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
That is why this minister should be prepared to justify why he wants to adjourn this debate. If he can give a really good reason why he wants to adjourn this debate, that would be a useful piece of information for this Assembly and then we could go on with looking at why we should not. If he wants to justify why we should not show respect for the committee process, well and good. You put forward your arguments and you vote against the motion, by all means. But this is an important matter.
The status of the committees is an important matter. It needs to be dealt with before we adjourn before Christmas. The cloud hanging over committees cannot be left hanging over committees in the way that this Attorney-General and his Chief Minister have done over the last few sitting days. It must be put to an end. We cannot adjourn this matter, and this minister should be asked to justify why he does want to adjourn this matter.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.58): The reason that this motion from Mrs Dunne should be supported is reflected partly in the attitude of Mr Corbell in his interjections and in his motion to shut a member down. I cannot remember the last time we had a motion in this place that a member be no longer heard. This is how sensitive it seems that Simon Corbell is to having any sort of debate on these issues.
Firstly, there is the debate which has been proposed to be shut down by the Labor Party on this committee process because of Mr Corbell’s clear embarrassment as a result of his performance in the last sitting week. Mr Corbell’s attack on the committee system, on his own colleagues, was a great embarrassment to the Labor Party. I am sure it was embarrassing to Mr Corbell when he reflected on it. And of course it was an embarrassment to his colleagues, Ms Porter in particular, whom he attacked. But he attacked the entire committee. He attacked all members of the committee, claiming they had engaged in a sham process. He said that Ms Porter, Ms Hunter and Mrs Dunne had all engaged in a sham process.
Now, when we have a motion that seeks to debate some of these issues and seeks to put back some civility in the way that committees are treated and lay some framework for how ministers should respond to committees, Simon Corbell’s touchiness has been evident. He is particularly vulnerable and touchy on this point, to the extent that he has sought to shut down the debate and then, when he could not immediately shut down the debate, he sought to move that the member no longer be heard. He sought to put the gag not just on the motion but on Mrs Dunne.
Is this the way we are going to do things in the Assembly now? Will we have ministers believing that they can simply shut down debate whenever they like? I would say to all members of this place that they should not support motions such as this and should not allow the government to shut down motions that they find inconvenient for no good reason. There has been no reason put.
I think Mr Corbell simply moved the motion that this be adjourned, without any rationale. We have not had any rationale from the minister as to why this should be the case. We can only surmise that it is because of his embarrassment over this motion. It is because he does not want to debate this motion. That has become evident, to the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video