Page 5503 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011

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MR HARGREAVES: Excuse me, how about you wait until the end of the sentence?

MR SPEAKER: Thank you, he is allowed to take a point of order.

Mr Seselja: If Mr Hargreaves wants to make allegations against Mrs Dunne, there are forms. He can move a motion against her. This is not a motion about Mrs Dunne; it is a motion about Mr Corbell and what he said. He is being irrelevant. He should be asked to be relevant, and if he wants to move a substantive motion, he should do so.

MR HARGREAVES: I would like to just complete the sentence, if I can, Mr Speaker, because it goes to the point that Mr Seselja is trying to make to you.

MR SPEAKER: Before you continue, I suspect you are about to try and draw this together. Let us just make sure that we stick to the matter of the motion.

MR HARGREAVES: Certainly, Mr Speaker. Since those opposite seem intent on not allowing me to put my view on this issue forward, I seek the permission of the chamber to truncate what I was going to say at this point to consider drafting an amendment to the motion, circulating it and then asking permission to rejoin the debate. Alternatively, I will just go to the credibility of what is being put forward. That is contained in Hansard of 15 November, and I draw people’s attention to that Hansard. It is at page 54 of the uncorrected proof of 15 November, where Mrs Dunne, in fact, verballed the Solicitor-General and has no right, therefore, to do that in this place.

Mrs Dunne: On a point of order. Mr Speaker, you have already ruled on this and Mr Hargreaves is flouting your ruling.

MR HARGREAVES: I have finished.

Mrs Dunne: Whether he is finished or not, what he has said is in contravention of your ruling, and I think you should do something about it.

Mr Hargreaves: On the point of order, Mr Speaker, you asked me to keep to the point or sit down, and I have just done that.

MR SPEAKER: Thank you. There is no point of order.

MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (10.38): Quite honestly, this is just getting ridiculous. This censure motion was delivered to my office at 9.47 this morning. Then at 9.53 we got 13 pages around the claim. At the very last minute we are getting information about a censure motion. If people were serious about their censure motions, surely they would be taking the time to come around, to have a discussion about it and to put the case clearly on the table.

These are serious matters. We used to feel as though we had a censure a week; now it appears to be a censure a day. I can only assume that the Canberra Liberals are not taking this very seriously and that they have never considered that, in order to be able


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