Page 5936 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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Any question relating to procedure or the conduct of business of the Assembly not provided for in these standing orders or practices of the Assembly, shall be decided according to the practice at the time prevailing in the House of Representatives in the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Quite clearly, in the House of Representatives the two positions are squared. Indeed, the management of government and opposition business is done by someone other than the government or the opposition whip in the House of Reps. I guess it comes down to a debate of what is the practice of the Assembly. What have we seen here today from Mr Hargreaves and Ms Bresnan? I will quote Ms Bresnan: “It has been the practice that the whip sits on the committee.”
Quite clearly, what you are seeing from the government, the crossbench, the Greens and anybody who votes for this motion today is a view that the practice is not what has occurred in the last three years where I have been whip and Mrs Dunne has been the manager of opposition business, that practice is something that needs to look back over the life of the Assembly since it was first formed and cover the first seven Assemblies of this place.
That is an interesting precedent. Obviously if we are voting on that today then that gives us a guide as to what practice means and what, in accordance with standing order 275, the practices of the Assembly are. It is interesting to note that the practice of the Assembly, according to Ms Bresnan, according to Mr Hargreaves and according to anybody that votes for this motion today, is about what has happened in the entirety of the Assembly and we are discounting what has occurred in the last three years.
I agree with Mrs Dunne and Mr Seselja on the points they have raised. The opposition will obviously not be supporting this motion today. It is quite clearly a personal vendetta by Mr Hargreaves aimed at Mrs Dunne. I am surprised and disappointed that the Greens, for whatever motives they have, are supporting this highly inappropriate motion. It appears that it will be passed because the government and the crossbench, for whatever reason, have their motives. It seems that what they are saying today is that the practice of this Assembly is determined based on what has happened over a series of Assemblies rather than just in the last three years. Mr Hargreaves may wish to comment on that. It is certainly what he has indicated and what Ms Bresnan has indicated.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.52): Mr Speaker, these are quite interesting discussions we are having here today, because for the length of this Assembly we have constantly had—particularly from the Greens—the talk of the new paradigm, how that what has gone in the past is in the past and how we need to look at new ways of doing things. Latimer House is the perfect example. We now have a committee that I am the chair of that has a minister and the Speaker on it. That is a new paradigm, because the tradition of this place has been for 20 years that you would normally not have the minister or the Speaker on a committee, and for good reason—it is called separation of powers.
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