Page 3211 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MS BRESNAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Liberals just cannot get their heads around anything which is complex—for example, the complexity of what civil disobedience entails. I go back to the fact, Mr Speaker, that you have said consistently that the actions taken by Greenpeace will have to be subject to the full consequences of the law. That is what has been stated, and that is why we cannot support the motion which has been put out here by Mr Seselja today. As I said, the greatest act of hypocrisy has come from the Liberal Party today when we have an example of where one of their members actually destroyed property and said that he was prepared to break the law and yet Mr Seselja, who was leader at the time, did not rein that member in. So there you go. That is the greatest example of rank hypocrisy we have seen today—not anything that has been said by Ms Hunter. I applaud everything that Ms Hunter said in her speech. I applaud everything that Ms Le Couteur said in her speech, and we will not be supporting this motion today.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (11.06): I thank Mr Seselja for bringing on this most important motion today. There have been some interesting contributions. I think that Mrs Dunne’s point was a particular highlight, where she turned the language that the Speaker had used to essentially support Greenpeace’s actions into an analogy for a similar incident that had occurred in the Assembly and just showed the rank hypocrisy of the position and the contradiction between Mr Rattenbury’s, the Speaker’s, support for Greenpeace in the media and his actions here as the Speaker. It just goes to the point that you cannot walk both sides of the fence.
We support some of the points that have been made by the Greens and some of those that have been made by Labor. We do not deny that there are some times when protests will occur. There are actions which will be taken. But the point is that you cannot sit in that chair, you cannot be the Speaker, and condone these sorts of actions. You may wish to, as a radical backbencher or as a member of Greenpeace. You may say that that is what you support: radical protest, illegal activity, wilful destruction of property. Maybe you can get away with it. I would suggest that it would not behove any member of this place to support that. But certainly it does not behove the Speaker.
What Mr Rattenbury has done by deciding to be the radical, to support Greenpeace, to support criminal activity, to say that the wilful destruction of property is okay, that break and enter is okay, whilst also sitting in that chair and presiding over the laws of this Assembly and us as the law-makers of this jurisdiction, is that he has put himself and put the position of Speaker, more importantly, in an untenable position. And what he has done has eroded the dignity of the position and has weakened the authority of the position. There is no question that, from this point forward, when Mr Rattenbury speaks as Speaker on any issue that comes before this Assembly, be it an issue of bias, be it unparliamentary language, be it an issue of privilege, his position has been severely weakened.
I think that it has been weakened in the eyes not only of those who sit on these benches but also those on the government benches. I would have to say that Mr Corbell and Ms Gallagher actually made some valid points in their speeches. Mr Corbell particularly made the point that Mr Rattenbury has been hypocritical in his selection of what he condones and what he condemns and made quite a good example,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video