Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill

Mr Speaker, the committee was debating the amendment to clause 5 with regards to considering reporting to the House of Representatives any use of the vacancy creation provisions referred to in sections 55, 55AAB, and 55E. I had given a ruling to the member to confine his discussions, as the discussion started to traverse to general elections, to the process of elections. We had a discussion, the ruling was given, but in the next discussion—the next point of order given—the member made the declaration that the presiding officers are working for the Government to hasten the passage of the bill. I asked the member to withdraw and apologise; he did so. He then asked for the Speaker to be recalled.

First, I did not make such a declaration at all. I asked a question, which is not unreasonable. Further, the circumstances here relate to—while it’s clause 5 of the bill, it’s new clause 3A that we are dealing with, and it was the suggestion from the Chair that my comments needed to avoid mentioning general election results. I was making the point that when we are discussing a bill that is called the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill that has a capacity in it to see a general election result declared by the Electoral Commission overturned in individual circumstances, it’s not unreasonable, in an amendment proposing that the Electoral Commission report to the House on the operation of the bill in relation to sections 55, 55AAB, and to 55E that we do mention how a circumstance could arise. Otherwise, we’re simply left with the position of standing up and saying “I support this amendment.”, and reading it. Now, that doesn’t add anything to the debate that needs to go on around such an important constitutional issue as this.

The further comment from the Chair was that there had been nothing new said. Well, that would entirely be the call of the Chair, but this, as I said at the time, is a debate and there will be new aspects of the reasons for supporting this in favour of this motion being put forward. Now, to my knowledge, there had only been one call prior to this. While there was a suggestion that there had been a lot of other discussions through the morning, through last night, and through earlier in the week about matters relating to the bill, they can’t be relevant to the debate that we’re having on the merit of this particular clause.

So it would be unfortunate if the Chair were to rule that in a committee stage debate, everyone speaking had to have a totally new point. It is perspectives on points that contribute to the quality of the debate, and when you’ve got a House of 120 people, there will be an awful lot of perspectives on any of the measures that might be discussed in the House.

This matter is relatively easily dealt with. Before I do it, though, I will make it very clear that even by way of question, one should not reflect on the Chair. Disguising something as a question rather than making an absolute statement questioning the partiality of the Chair is unacceptable. The next point I will make is that I’m going to rely on the Guinness and Lang rulings that go back to 1910 and 1913, on page 74 of the Speakers’ Rulings. The question of whether something is relevant or not is a decision for the Chair.

In Committee

Debate resumed.

New clause 3A (Functions of Electoral Commission) (continued)