2018-05-23
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) (10:31:26) — The Greens have seriously considered the motion put forward by Mr Rich-Phillips, which provides that the Privileges Committee should elect two of its members to be joint chairs, the mechanisms for that and also a broad outline of how that would operate in terms of chairing alternate meetings and the administrative role of the chair to be exercised by the agreement of the joint chairs. In fact the Greens have a history of co-leaders and co-conveners of the party, both here in Australia and overseas.
So it is a model that we do have a lot of affinity with, and we have worked in that way in many instances.
I do agree with the points made by Ms Symes in terms of this committee — Mr Rich-Phillips said himself that in fact the committee has never been constituted — that it is probably not the best time to try this arrangement, given that there has never been a co-chair arrangement in the Parliament of Victoria. I agree that the model put forward by Mr Rich-Phillips with regard to the commonwealth Parliament's joint select committee is a good model and it is working well on the particular issue it is considering. The co-chairs of that committee are from the Senate and the House of Representatives. That is something that we could look at with joint committees in the Parliament of Victoria.
I have been a strong advocate of reforming the committee system ever since I have been here, and I am pleased to see that it actually has been reformed somewhat from what it was in the past. When I arrived in this Parliament there were no Legislative Council standing committees. I moved the motion to have those established, and they were established. Sadly in the last term of government, when the coalition had the numbers, no bills went to those committees except Greens private members bills referred by the government. None of their own bills went to those committees, even though some of the inquiries, including the Environment and Planning Committee's inquiry into planning and public health, resulted in good reports. The committees did not do the sort and amount of work they are doing now, including the seminal inquiry into dying with dignity that was done by the Legal and Social Issues Committee. So there are models of how committees have worked in the Parliament of Victoria, and I would suggest that the best model for the Privileges Committee to follow is the model that the standing committees of the upper house work to. Notwithstanding that, I do think that at some stage we should be looking at co-chairing of committees, particularly joint committees.
The other issue that the Privileges Committee has had referred to it is an issue that is before this chamber also because of the Greens. It was the Greens who actually moved the motion to send to the Ombudsman the issue that was raised in the media with regard to the misuse of electorate office budgets. It was a very long time ago when that motion was passed. The government of course challenged that motion in the Supreme Court, in the Court of Appeal and even in the High Court. As I mentioned when moving that the issue be referred to the Privileges Committee, the High Court judgement was very short. Basically it was: no, do not bring this item here; you do not have any grounds for it.
That resulted, of course, in the Ombudsman's report which was released early this year. The Greens moved that it be referred to the Privileges Committee, which even though it has never been constituted, is really the only avenue open to us. Because we do not have in this Parliament an independent commissioner for standards that works across both chambers, that advises MPs on the use of their entitlements, allowances and budgets and that also polices and enforces that, we were in the position where we had to use the Privileges Committee, notwithstanding that it has never been constituted. There was no other avenue. The Greens were not going to support establishing a select committee which was going to repeat the work that the Ombudsman had already done. Our motion is that there is the Ombudsman's report, and the Privileges Committee should be looking into whether the MPs named in the report and shown to have misused their electorate office budgets are in fact in contempt of the Parliament and should be sanctioned. That is what we are looking at. That is the avenue open to us. As I have said, we are not opposed to the idea of co-chairs, but we are in this particular instance.
We are looking at a very serious issue, and as of this week we have another issue that could be referred to the Privileges Committee, regarding coalition members and the breaking of the convention of pairing arrangements. Whether or not that goes to the Privileges Committee, the fact is that it is on the notice paper now. We know that the committee has met several times and tried to come to an agreement about who should chair the committee and has not been able to do that, which is why the matter is back here for the house to try to resolve.
It has been our view that the chairing of that committee should be by the Greens and the crossbench members so that it is completely separate from and independent of the government. The government itself acknowledges that it should not have a member as chair or deputy chair of that committee. We believe also that the opposition, who have not covered themselves in glory in their behaviour in terms of the contravention of the convention of pairing, should not chair the committee. That behaviour had its effect on that particular day but, as we know, has an ongoing effect not only in this Parliament but also in other parliaments in terms of the ability to continue with pairing arrangements and trust that they will be adhered to in the future, because that level of trust has been lost following the events of that day.
We have another notice of motion already on the notice paper, notice of motion 568, that would put forward, as we attempted to do earlier by leave, that Ms Springle be the chair of the committee and that a crossbench person be the deputy chair. That is our preferred position, and that is the motion that we would like to move. We feel that that would be the best way forward, not only for the functioning of the committee but for it to be seen as independent of the government and of the opposition, because we have a motion that could involve opposition members being subject to inquiry by the committee. For those reasons, we will not be able to support the motion put forward by Mr Rich-Phillips.
Later in debate:
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) (14:07:54) — I move:
That this house appoints Ms Springle to be the chair of the Privileges Committee and a member from a minority group or Independent member to be the deputy chair of the Privileges Committee.
You may recall that back in late March I attempted to move a motion by leave to appoint Ms Springle as the chair of the Privileges Committee, but leave was denied. We spoke about this issue earlier today in terms of the referral of matters arising from the report of the Ombudsman into the misuse of electorate office budgets by certain members of the ALP who were named in the Ombudsman's report. The Greens moved a motion referring those MPs to the Privileges Committee for that committee to ascertain whether those members were in contempt of the Parliament and should be sanctioned and if so what that sanction should be, arising from the very comprehensive report that the Ombudsman produced as a result of the motion that was put to the Parliament by the Greens back in 2015.
As I said this morning, that motion, which was passed by Council, was challenged by the government in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said the Ombudsman did have jurisdiction over the matter, so the government then took it to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal said the Supreme Court was right and the Ombudsman did have jurisdiction over the matter. The government then took it to the High Court. The High Court, as I said before, gave one of its shortest judgements, which was that there were no grounds for the matter to be before the High Court and that the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal were correct in their deliberations on that matter.
For us it followed that what had happened had been fairly well-established, although I will acknowledge not necessarily fully. There may have be some gaps in knowledge, but it was fairly well-established as to what had happened. What the Parliament really needed to do then was to take the matter further as to what sanctions should apply to those members of Parliament. That is the matter that the Privileges Committee so far has not been able to deal with as a result of the committee not being able to operate because a chair has not been appointed.
From the outset we put forward Ms Springle, who is our existing member on the committee. She has been a member on the committee since the start of this parliamentary session. Given that we have driven these motions — and we put this motion forward — we feel that Ms Springle should be the chair. She is very well able to carry out those duties. She is an experienced parliamentarian; she is experienced on committees. She has been on some very gruelling committee inquiries and is already a deputy chair of a committee of the Parliament.
We also believe that the deputy chair should be from the crossbench, just to keep the committee very independent of both the government and the opposition in this particular inquiry. Obviously a government member cannot be a chair or deputy chair of an inquiry which is looking at their own members. As I mentioned, there is now on the notice paper — whether it gets to the committee or not, but it is on the notice paper — a referral dealing with members of the opposition. Therefore it is appropriate that Ms Springle be the chair and that a crossbench member be the deputy chair.
I do not think there is an awful lot more to say about this except that there has been a very long delay in getting this important matter of public importance dealt with. It is now seven or eight weeks since the original motion was agreed to. The committee has not met. A lot of work could have been done in that time that has not been done. I think this is the way forward: to have the committee in good hands and proceed with the important matter that has been referred to it.