2016-08-31
MR BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — The Greens will support the motion. This is the second time that Ms Wooldridge has moved this motion, but the government should be under no illusions: there is nothing routine or tokenistic about the moving of this motion. The majority of members in this house are deadly serious when they argue that what the government is doing here is unconstitutional and in fact is a major hit at the invisible glue that appears between the written bits of our constitution — in this case, section 27A of the Constitution Act 1975, which says:
Subject to this section, if a casual vacancy occurs in the seat of a member of the Council, a person must be chosen to occupy the vacant seat by a joint sitting of the Council and the Assembly.
The invisible, unwritten part of this is that that ought to be happening at the earliest available opportunity. Those express words may not be there, but when you think about the necessity of propriety in our constitutional system, not every single piece of required behaviour is written down to that degree of detail. There are many, many unwritten parts of our constitution in the form of codes of behaviour that, through their practice, have in fact developed over time into constitutional conventions. They may not be legally enforceable, but they are nevertheless essential for us to be able to get on and do the job we have been elected to do.
So it is with increasing stridency that the majority of people in this chamber intend to keep pushing on this issue. In fact the longer the government sticks with its position, the more damage it is doing to these important principles. For that matter, you would not have to look too far ahead into the future to imagine another government of any particular flavour using this particular set of circumstances to mount their own case down the line that another member from another party ought to be excluded from taking up their seat because of some reason — whatever it is — that that government at the time thinks they can justify.
The government, of course, are going to stand up and openly state that this is tit for tat, that this is revenge for the completely lawful suspension of the Leader of the Government from this chamber. It was lawful, it was appropriate in relation to the standing orders and it came at the end of a very long process of many, many motions with many, many opportunities for the government to comply with the request for documents. It is something that happened more than 10 years ago in New South Wales in their Parliament, the result being that the powers vis-a-vis the executive and the Parliament itself were clarified.
The government is going to really struggle to make a case that somehow the Legislative Council has gone rogue. The government has clearly gone rogue in relation to this provision in the constitution, and one has to wonder, with the amount of problems they have got at the moment, why they are making more for themselves. One has to wonder who they think the audience for this particular message is. Without a doubt there would not be 1 in 10 000 people out there who actually even know that a member is being prevented from taking up his seat. There would probably not be 100 people in Victoria who could explain the section of the constitution and how it is that the government has chosen this course, but nevertheless it goes straight to the heart of the small amounts of guidance we are given in the constitution — the instruction manual, if you like, for our entire democracy. It goes straight to the heart of it. It shapes the foundation. It threatens to do long-term damage to the nature of our democracy, and I am absolutely struggling to understand what profit the government seeks.
I have written to the Premier asking for a meeting to discuss this issue.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER — I have not requested any meetings with the Premier in the last two years. In fact the last time I had a conversation with the Premier was at Dame Elisabeth Murdoch's memorial, if you can remember back that far, and all we did was discuss what our kids were learning at school. But I treat this matter most seriously, and I am really expecting a response from the Premier. I understand that his leaders and deputy leaders have embarked on a particular course.
It could be, as Mr Finn says, that the Premier is simply dealing with so many other spinning plates that section 27A of the constitution did not really make it all the way into his morning briefing, but nevertheless he, like all of us, has a responsibility to leave the system of government not just intact but ideally even in a better state than he inherited it. There are a number of measures that relate to transparency, probity, governance and so forth that he is moving steadily through the Parliament, most of which will receive the support of the Greens. There is a raft of other areas where he does not have a program of action, but with this one he is certainly undoing all of his good work because he is effectively lighting the fuse on a time bomb that could go off any time in the future, anywhere down the track.
As we know with these things, one instance of bad behaviour very quickly gets used as a precedent for another and a degrading kind of set of precedents roll one into another. For all its broad community support, the democracy is always hanging by a kind of thread that is made simply out of good intentions. Anyone who might like to turn their mind to the issues here will understand that this cannot just simply be another bit of political cut and thrust, another trading card in the big game, another bit of externalising of his own internal pressures.
This is one of the most serious and weighty sections of our constitution. It is the reason why in fact the houses have to act jointly in order to effect this. In itself, by its nature, it is built in as a check and balance on misbehaviour, but unfortunately it is being degraded in the process. That is a most serious matter that we intend to continue to apply pressure to. In fact the pressure will be ramped up as the weeks go by if the government continues in this course of action.
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