Page 294 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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MR SPEAKER: Thank you, Mrs Dunne.
Mr Hargreaves: On the point of order.
MR SPEAKER: Sorry, Mrs Dunne, one moment before you continue your speech.
Mr Hargreaves: I am sorry to interrupt you, Mrs Dunne, but as I understood it—and please correct me—you did ask Mr Hanson to withdraw as well, did you not?
MR SPEAKER: No, I did not. I did not, no. I thought Mr Hanson—
Mr Hargreaves: Okay, fine. I misheard it. No, that is okay. I misheard it.
MR SPEAKER: My view was that Mr Hanson’s words were a point of reference as opposed to a direct use of the word.
Mr Hargreaves: I misheard it, Mr Speaker. That is all right.
MR SPEAKER: That is fine. It is better to be clear at this point.
MRS DUNNE: Irrespective of the means by which Mr Hargreaves’s tirade was fuelled last night, what we have got is the situation that we have seen on a number of occasions: another late night sitting and another fine mess he has got his party into. We have seen the incident in which Mr Hargreaves referred to where he made comments about me. Yes, he did apologise, but he apologised “if I had been offended”. He did not apologise because what he said was inappropriate. Ms Gallagher apologised “if I had been offended”, not because what was said was, by itself, utterly offensive.
We have a pattern of behaviour here. Mr Smyth is correct. This is a test for the Chief Minister about the standards that she maintains from her members. She has failed this test in her own words. The Greens have failed the test as well. There is a difference between the levels of comment that are made across this chamber to one another.
The fact that from time to time on a fairly regular basis Mr Hargreaves, along with everybody else in this chamber, is called upon to withdraw comments as being unparliamentary, as we have just seen, shows that we in this place try to maintain standards. But those standards have not been upheld in Mr Hargreaves’s dealings with members of the community. The people who pay our salaries were vilified last night by Mr Hargreaves in a most disgusting way.
Mr Smyth has read out the comments. I had cause to take a point of order because of the fact that Mr Hargreaves, in his comments last night, referred to a respected and named member of the community as demonstrating stupidity. He withdrew that comment but not before it was it made. But then he went on and made it worse by saying not only has he come out of the closet but that he has come out of the water closet.
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