Page 4839 - Week 11 - Thursday, 21 October 2010
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MR HARGREAVES: I am speaking through the Speaker, Mr Hanson. Would you please be a little bit more courteous? I heard you in silence, and it will be for the last time today if you keep this up. Ms Hunter, I think, has a point that things need to be worked out, because there is a definitional difference. Part of the definitional difference is because it is based on trust. This side of the house cannot trust that side of the house to honour any convention, because they have broken conventions.
Mr Hanson: Ms Burch was the one who changed her speech. Why should we be trusting you?
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR HARGREAVES: Thank you. They have broken conventions in the past. Mrs Dunne refused the Chief Minister a pair to go to a ministerial council in a previous Assembly. That was the breaking of a convention. These people make up conventions any time they feel like it.
Mr Hanson: He’s on holiday. You wanted to break a convention—
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hanson!
MR HARGREAVES: In fact, Mr Speaker—
Mr Hanson: You wanted to break a convention that he gets a pair for going on a holiday.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, be quiet!
MR HARGREAVES: In fact, Mr Speaker, Mrs Dunne says, “This is a convention across parliaments and Assemblies.” That is very glib. I do not know of any, and I have been around a bit longer than Mrs Dunne has. She says it is a convention in this parliament and others. It is not a convention in this parliament, and it is not a convention in other parliaments.
What we see here, I believe, is a difference in definition, and certainly we can work through that. Whether the administration and procedure committee is the place to do it, I do not know. Whether it is the whips who do it, I do not know that either. Perhaps, in fact, all three of us need to go back to our groups and say, “Okay, which is the best mechanism to actually clear this up?” I do not mind doing that at all, and I do not mind being party to that conversation. But we need to be consistent in this place.
Now, if Mrs Dunne is sitting there not paying attention to the business of the Assembly and misses something, she cannot use that as an excuse. She cannot use her own incompetence or deafness as an excuse when she is talking in another debate. Second of all, we had this very same issue raised with respect to Mr Corbell or Mr Barr—I have forgotten which—earlier on this week, and we processed that matter through.
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