06 April 2011
Mr MORRIS (Mornington) — How the worm has turned in the few short months since November. Before I start on the general principle of the motion I want to speak briefly on the proposition that has been put forward in the recent comments of the member for Albert Park and the earlier comments of the member for Bendigo East expressing concern about proposed clause 8(1)(b).
I refer to the current standing orders of the House of Representatives, which identify very clearly in standing order 29 that the adjournment will be proposed in that house at 9.30 p.m. on Monday, 9.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 7.00 p.m. on Wednesday and 4.30 p.m. on Thursday. It is nothing new to have in place an identified time for the adjournment.
To return to the principle of the motion, what is proposed with this motion is simply a new sessional order to replace standing order 32 for the duration of the session. In effect what it does is codify the arrangements that have operated in both the 55th and 56th parliaments, arrangements that operated very much by agreement and through the cooperation between the government and the opposition. That allowed those arrangements to work, and they did work.
Those days of agreement and cooperation have unfortunately evaporated. We have an opposition that will seize on every point, every opportunity and every possible way to divert the energies of the house from the purposes for which we are here. We have an ALP opposition that will put, at every opportunity, politics first and Victorian families a very distant second.
In recent days we had the debate on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (Public Housing) Bill 2011. An opposition member called a frivolous point of order, was turned down and immediately sought to have a quorum called. When the count was done we were only one member short of a quorum, but the call proceeded. The lack of quorum would not have been any hindrance to the business of the house; the quorum was called simply to disrupt business.
That is what we are dealing with at this moment. Every opportunity to interrupt business is taken. We have seen stunts, we have seen point‑scoring, we have seen filibusters, we have seen grandstanding, we have seen procedural devices and we have seen the manipulation of any rule the opposition can come up with to disrupt and thwart the business of the house and the business of the people of Victoria.
That is what we are dealing with in this case. It is all calculated to disrupt the Parliament and to disrupt proper debate. Indeed the opposition seems to have trouble — despite the protestations of the member for Lyndhurst — with the concept that in fact it is not the government any more.
The changes proposed by the Leader of the House I believe are necessary to ensure that the business of the house can proceed in an orderly fashion. Cooperation is certainly preferable. If we could we would certainly do work cooperatively, but cooperation requires two sides, and when one side will not participate you cannot arrange affairs on a cooperative basis.
The people of Victoria expect us to work together to discharge their business and not to use procedural devices in order to derail a program put before us. The opposition unfortunately insists on attempting to derail the program. It has consequently become necessary to move these proposed variations to the sessional orders.
It would be best to do it by agreement, as I have said. In this case we cannot. I think the Leader of the House has in fact been entirely reasonable with the changes he has proposed because they simply codify the arrangements that have been in place for two parliamentary terms.
If we were really interested in gagging debate, as has been suggested by some, I am sure there would be far more effective ways of doing it.
The changes that are proposed are entirely reasonable, and I commend the motion.
Legislative Assembly 6 April 2011
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