Page 1271 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Turning to the more substantive matters, I think there seem to be two issues, as far as I can see. One is the difference between political and government and the other is whether or not it is possible to ask questions about things. Taking the second one first, just to confuse myself as well as everyone else, the Liberal Party have said that because the Speaker has ruled that the Greens parliamentary agreement is not a suitable subject for questions in question time, that means questions cannot be asked about it. That is utter nonsense. Question time is usually three hours of a sitting week. There are 14 sitting weeks in a year. That means that the rest of the time is available for asking questions on this matter if you want to do so. To think that question time is the only possible time that people can say anything about any item is just silly. There are other forums available to all of us apart from question time. I believe that some of us talk to other members of the Assembly. Some of us also talk to the media. Possibly the Liberal Party is not one of those.
The Liberal Party was also trying to make a point about the distinction between political and government. This seems to be where the Liberal Party has not quite worked it out. We all have many roles. The five people that the rules say we can ask questions of in question time—we ask questions of them in their roles as ministers. They all have many roles. They are parents, they are sons, they are daughters, they are husbands, they are wives and they are members of the Labor Party. We ask them questions only in one of their roles—their roles as ministers in the ACT government. That is a very important role and that is what we ask them questions about. We do not have a convention here that you can ask the crossbench about its roles. We cannot ask the opposition questions. The convention in this place is that we ask questions of government ministers about what the government does. We do not ask questions about political arrangements.
As I said, question time is only part of the political process. The Speaker has correctly ruled that questions about that political agreement are not relevant. As Ms Gallagher answered, it is quite relevant to ask the government what the government is doing. Ms Gallagher answered that question. The government has answered questions about things it did which did have a relationship to the agreement, but the point is that they have answered the questions in their roles as ministers of the government and they have answered the questions because the government has done something or not done something, or whatever.
The point is that question time has specific rules. The rules, as has been pointed out, are about asking questions. Under standing order 114:
Questions may be put to a Minister relating to public affairs with which that Minister is officially connected, to proceedings pending in the Assembly or to any matter of administration for which that Minister is responsible.
I think we have got it very clear that no minister is responsible for the Greens’ parliamentary agreement as a minister. The ministers are responsible for the activities in their department, in their portfolios. The Treasurer is responsible for expenditure. All of those are legitimate things to be asked about. The crossbench and the opposition ask about them. The Greens-ALP agreement is a political agreement. It is something which is scrutinised in forums other than this one.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video