Page 3224 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
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these things and to try and wriggle his way out of it. He sent to Mr Seselja a copy of a letter that he sent to the CityNews. Most of the content of that letter to the CityNews was regurgitated this morning by Ms Hunter. The reference to Martin Luther King, the reference to civil disobedience—all of those things were in Mr Rattenbury’s letter that he wrote yesterday. So as late as yesterday he had not retracted what could have been passed off as something said in the heat of the moment that was not really thought through. He has had that opportunity for over one month and he has not retracted. He seems to still hold the view that he is not in a position to either condemn or condone.
He is in a position to condemn because these people, by their own admission, broke the law, by their own admission and by the YouTube video that they have posted, which show that they broke into a secure facility and that, by the use of whipper snippers, they destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of property and put back vital scientific research by at least a year—scientific research that may have led to scientists around the world being able to better feed the hungry.
What we have done here, what Mr Smyth has done by his amendment, is to throw out a challenge to the government, to throw out a challenge to the Attorney-General, the first law officer of this place, to see whether he can bring himself to say anything about the inappropriateness of the behaviour of the Speaker, and the government have failed. The government have demonstrated that they have no standards.
The government, like the Greens, are casting around trying to find other comparable examples, but there are none. You can search your way all through Erskine May, through House of Representatives Practice, through Odgers. There is no precedent for the bad behaviour of this Speaker when he went on 2CN and said the things that he said and in his persistent failure to retract those words. Not only has he failed to retract those words but he has reinforced them in print on a number of occasions.
This Speaker said it was all right, if you believe in something strongly enough, to break the law. Not in some civil disobedience way; let us not be fooled. Breaking and entering and destruction of property are not your average civil disobedience. Refusing to sit at the back of the bus may be civil disobedience but breaking and entering does not come into the same category. Sitting down on the road may be civil disobedience but breaking and entering and destroying property with a whipper snipper, destroying scientists’ work, does not come into the same category.
There is no precedent in all of the learned works you would refer to—the House of Commons, the House of Representatives and the Senate have no precedent for such bad behaviour. There are precedents in the House of Commons, of course, where Speakers have been found—there was one in the previous term of the House of Commons—to have done the wrong thing. In that case it was misuse of electorate funds and the Speaker resigned. Here we have a Speaker who condoned destruction of property and he has stuck by it. If he stuck by it, that is fine; he should have the guts and the honour to voluntarily leave his position because they are incompatible. Sitting in that seat is incompatible with the views that he expressed and has not retracted.
This government have said that they will go to any lengths possible to maintain him in this position because it is more important to maintain the cosy Greens alliance than to
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