Page 3218 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
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MR COE (Ginninderra) (11.30): I spoke earlier about some of the hypocrisy that the Greens and, indeed, the Greenpeace movement—indeed, the global Greens movement—demonstrate on a regular basis. I want to draw the Assembly’s attention to one particular incident which occurred about seven, eight or nine months ago. It is with regard to a tweet that I made about the Speaker and, indeed, about his attitude on that particular day. I actually made that about a year ago, in August last year. Then about five months later Mr Rattenbury logged onto the web, trawled down my Twitter account and read tweets of mine from months ago. It is a bit of an honour, I guess, that the good leader of this chamber should be trawling through my tweets of five months ago but, nonetheless, he thought it appropriate to write me a letter. That is what he did. On 21 December, months after I had written a tweet, he wrote me a letter, which included this sentence:
I remind you that the Chair’s ability to uphold order is not confined to incidents occurring during parliamentary debate.
I repeat:
I remind you that the Chair’s ability to uphold order is not confined to incidents occurring during parliamentary debate.
It is a very interesting case, this one. I wonder whether he was upholding order when he spoke on ABC radio a few weeks ago about the criminal activity which occurred in Ginninderra on 14 July. Look at the hypocrisy here. This is Mr Speaker telling me that I am not upholding order, or at least making an allegation that I may not be upholding order, by submitting a tweet. Here we have a Speaker that is, in effect, condoning criminal activity and somehow that is okay. It is not okay for me to say that the Speaker is surly, which was the very word that I used. That is not okay. That is not upholding order. But it is okay for the Speaker to go on ABC radio to an audience of tens of thousands of people, perhaps even 100,000 people, and in effect condone criminal activity.
This shows the hypocrisy of Mr Speaker and it shows that Mr Speaker is no longer fit to serve in that role. We as a legislature, as individual legislators, should not be here condoning his behaviour, just as he, in effect, condoned the criminal activity which occurred in Ginninderra on 14 July. I urge all members of this place to support the amended motion.
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (11.33): The role of Speaker is redolent with tradition and status. The position was first recorded in 1377 to describe the role of Thomas de Hungerford in the parliament of England. The Speaker’s official role is to moderate debate, make rulings on procedure, announce the result of votes and the like. The Speaker decides who may speak and has the powers to discipline members who break the procedures of the house. The Speaker often also represents the body in person, as the voice of the body in ceremonial and some other situations. It is, in all interpretations of the position, an important one. The noted authority on parliamentary procedure, Erskine May, notes that the chief characteristics attaching to the office of Speaker in the House of Commons are authority and impartiality.
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