Constitution (Appropriation and Supply) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 15 October 2015.)

Mr TRELOAR: Madam Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:04): I rise today, as lead speaker, to speak on the Constitution (Appropriation and Supply) Amendment Bill 2015. Notwithstanding the order of items that are listed on our sheet, I am assuming, for the purposes of the debate on these matters, that we are also dealing with the Referendum (Appropriation and Supply) Amendment Bill 2015, because together they are bills both of which are necessary to pass if there is to be reform of the constitution.

I do not think it is necessary for me to elaborate in detail as to why that is the case, suffice to say that the Constitution Act 1934 has special provisions which require there to be a certain majority with respect to the passage of the bill through the parliament and for reform in this area for such a point to be presented as a referendum to the people of South Australia. So, there is the passage of the statutes, both of which would be necessary to progress reform in this area. Accordingly, I will address my remarks at least with respect to both of those bills as being in tandem, both of which were moved by the Attorney-General on 15 October 2015.

There is a second set of bills to follow which provide for the government's proposed resolution of deadlocks in the passage of legislation in our parliament. Again, they are in the form of two bills; namely, the Constitution (Deadlocks) Amendment Bill 2015 and the ancillary referendum bill which will follow in these debates. Also scheduled for consideration this week is a third bill, introduced on 15 October 2015 by the Attorney-General again, entitled the Electoral (Legislative Council Voting) Amendment Bill 2015. That is a bill proposing reform and in particular the introduction of what is known as the Sainte-Laguë voting system for the Legislative Council.

I will come to those matters when we deal with the bill, but I just make the point that the government has introduced a tranche of bills with respect to reform of the parliament, and in particular the Legislative Council. It cannot progress in any kind of isolation without there being some reflection on what has happened in the past and what is happening today. The parliament will probably feel mercifully relieved that I am not going to traverse all of the events of 1843, or since then, when the Legislative Council was first established in South Australia, sorely tempted as I am.

I am going to briefly reflect on that period leading up to the Constitution Act 1857, but before I jump into that pool of history can I just summarise, for the purposes of the bill itself, that it essentially seeks to amend those sections of the Constitution Act which relate to money bills; that is, budgets, appropriation bills and the like, or indeed any piece of legislation which has a price tag with it; that is, that requires some provision from the general revenue, or indeed a dedicated fund under the control of the government, to be applied to facilitate its implementation.

For example, if one were to introduce a bill to establish a particular structure in tandem with a government department—another agency, for example—it would require staff and a budget. When the government announced that they wanted to have a commissioner for Kangaroo Island, that office needed to have support staff so it needed a budget allocation (which, incidentally, is about $1 million a year) and they appointed the commissioner with staff allocations, with travel costs to go back and forth to Kangaroo Island, and so on, so it costs money. It is a bill which, if passed, will cost money to implement. That is what we are talking about, essentially, in relation to money bills.

This bill is to introduce a new process of securing the passage of the appropriation and supply bills so that those bills do not need to be passed by the Legislative Council before being presented to the Governor for assent. The Constitution Act currently gives power to the Legislative Council to reject either the Appropriation Bill or the Supply Bill, and I will come back to the commentary surrounding the history of that shortly.

In short, these bills will insert a new provision into the Constitution Act, if passed. They will relate to either the annual appropriation or supply bill so, if the Legislative Council fails to pass the bill within a month or rejects the bill or passes the bill with amendments to which the House of Assembly does not agree, the bills will be taken to have passed both houses of parliament and will be presented to the Governor for assent. In short, this will totally change the provisions currently in section 10 of the Constitution Act which give the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly equal power within the parliamentary structure.

Here comes the interesting point. The government says, via the Attorney-General's contribution, that the basis upon which this bill is presented, the argument as to why it is necessary to change this process as to what is to happen in the event that the Legislative Council does not do everything that the House of Assembly wants it to in a timely manner, is that 'There is a risk that the Legislative Council could misuse that power and unacceptably delay the annual Appropriation Bill and, in doing so, disrupt the machinery of government.' Those are the very words in the second reading contribution of the Attorney-General.

The fear is that there is some risk that this would happen and, essentially, the whole operation of government would come to some kind of grinding halt. Not one single example has been given as to that having occurred or, indeed, even that there has been a threat of that having occurred, but that is the argument upon which the Attorney-General has introduced this bill to the parliament and asked us here in the House of Assembly to support its passage.

I have to say that, in an environment of having started parliament this week and the Premier announcing yesterday (on which there was some public commentary) that he was keen to have, if I paraphrase this, a fresh start to the year and that there be a resetting of the relationship between the government and members in the Legislative Council and, in particular—

The Hon. J.M. Rankine: The crossbenchers.

Ms CHAPMAN: —the crossbenchers, as I am ably assisted by the member for Wright—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Ms CHAPMAN: I actually spoke to one of them today, who had not had a phone call at all, incidentally. Nevertheless, the olive branch was being extended by the Premier because he wanted to reset the relationship with the crossbenchers and start again this year after a pretty bumpy road, clearly, when we dealt with the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Bill in the dying days of last year's parliament. He wanted to have a better relationship with them and he is quoted as saying, 'We're confident that we can come to a sensible compromise'—referring to the planning minister John Rau—'and prepared to sit down and have a cup of tea and a Monte Carlo biscuit with any MP who is concerned over the reforms.' So there was going to be a panacea of discussion, civilised discourse and conversation and hopeful compromise in dealings with the legislative agenda of the government.

In the same breath on the same day we received the tabled program of the government in this house which is to introduce constitutional reform to effectively strip the Legislative Council of power and to implement—if they get their way—reforms that will clearly adversely affect those crossbenchers and members of the minority parties in the Legislative Council. This is the way the government operates.

The Premier says, 'I want to have a respectful, civilised conversation, communicate with the crossbenchers and have dialogue that will be fruitful,' and present as though he is a great panacea of compromise, and yet his 2IC, his deputy, is progressing in this house the very next day legislation that will basically execute the power, strip away that power that is currently able to be exercised by members of the Legislative Council. It is a dispossession of their role and responsibility which is in total contradiction to the mantra coming from the Premier as to his respect for and commitment to negotiate with members in another place.

It is fair to say that we have had—and certainly even in the time that I have been here in the parliament, under a Rann and now Weatherill governments—a few cracks of the whip on this reform. It has come in slightly different packages in the time that I have been here but I will come to what I call the 21^st century reforms of this government in 2005, 2009 and now in 2016, where there is an attempt to either abolish or to dispossess or strip away the legislative powers in the format that I will describe.

Let me briefly go back to 1843. The Legislative Council was the first parliament in South Australia and was followed, I think 14 or 15 years later, with the establishment of our house here, the House of Assembly. The government, it is fair to say, has not been unique in raising questions about the franchise of the Legislative Council—that is the base upon which Legislative Council members are elected—there has been a controversy for over 100 years and probably since its inception there has been, from time to time, some discussion about that and/or whether it is appropriate that we have a bicameral legislature, as was established and proposed back at the settlement of South Australia, taken up in most of the states around Australia and, indeed, in our federal parliament ultimately after the coming together of the federation of the colonies.

It is fair to say that even here in South Australia, within the first year of the Constitution Act of 1856, media reports of the day recorded public debate as to whether the colony should have a unicameral or bicameral parliament. As published in The Register on 4 September 1856 under the title of 'The Union of the Two Houses', the following statements were made:

The more closely we scrutinise this idea the more deeply we are convinced…The broad principle of the amalgamation of the two Houses we advocate on economical, political and social grounds. One House will be less costly than two Houses and we have no money to spend in needless complications. One House would be more politically useful than two Houses, there being no fear of deadlocks and injurious suppression of public business.

Ultimately, that position did not prevail. Even back in the 1850s, it seems that wiser heads recognised the importance of having a bicameral legislature. I think it is reasonable to remember the context of why the two houses of parliament had been adopted, following the British system. Ms Jan Davis, the Clerk of the Legislative Council, prepared an excellent paper that she presented to the 34^th Conference of Presiding Officers and Clerks in Tonga in 2003 on the question of constitutional powers and safeguards for a bicameral legislature. She outlined an interesting history, but she makes the point that the Australian colonies accepted the principle of bicameralism and planned for two houses of parliament. She quotes Mr Dean Jaensch on 'Upper Houses of the Australian States' in a publication in 1972, as follows:

The Lower to represent the people, the Upper to consist of the Education, Wealth and more especially of the Settled Interests of the country…that portion of the community naturally indisposed to rash and hasty legislation…it was prudent and necessary to safeguard the rights of property, and especially of rural property, against the possible incursion by those who had little. The diggers, the Chartists, the embryonic commercial and industrial work force and the rural labourers were economically essential—but politically doubtful elements in the new societies. And while democracy might have its head in the Lower Houses, it was to run the gauntlet of the settled men of property in the Upper.

We read something like that today, out of the context of the early part of the 1800s, and recognise that it is not only quaintly old fashioned at best but unacceptable, divisive and discriminatory compared to what we have today. I think it is fair to say that, whilst the Australian Labor Party has almost had a fixation over the last 115 years or so in their somewhat vitriolic attack from time to time—but certainly pushed for and maintained a policy to abolish or diminish the power of the legislative councils or upper houses generally. I am not going to be critical of that policy today, but I make the point that they have been absolutely vigilant in maintaining it for over 100 years.

I find it quite curious that, at least in my lifetime, the Australian Labor Party certainly pushed for the expansion of franchise in respect of those who vote in the Legislative Council, that is, from those who owned property, across to those of the fairer sex and the gender equality of women having the right to vote. It is not just women who own property but all women and men over the age of 21 years in the first instance, and then with the reforms on voting age over the age of 18 years; so, full adult franchise to be applied since the early 1970s.

It took 100 years or so to get to that stage. I think it was very strongly pushed and advocated by many members of the Australian Labor Party. Yet, having achieved a situation where men and women can be represented in the Legislative Council and where they can vote equally, provided they are on the electoral role and irrespective of colour or sex provided they are over the age of 18, inconsistent with that, in my view, is that they should be so zealous in their desire to be kneecap the poor old Legislative Council. However, we could go on at some length with that debate; but I just make the point that since I have been here in the parliament, since 2002, since this government has been in place (that is, under premier Rann and then Premier Weatherill) this is the third bite of the cherry, this is the third attempt.

Members might recall that in 2002 the Rann government formed government. There was an agreement with then speaker Mr Peter Lewis, who was to be granted, as one of the terms of the agreement of the Rann government forming government, a constitutional convention. That convention eventually took place over a sustained period and with significant public participation. The upshot was that not only was there confidence from the convention in resolving a number of things but, importantly for this issue, two things: one is that we needed the members of parliament in numbers that we had, that is, we did not have to halve the Legislative Council or the House of Assembly; and, secondly, South Australians wanted to keep the bicameral system. Not only did they decide it at that convention but they have consistently at election after election declined to give the governing party, or aggregate of parties in this house, full control in the same party, or aggregate of parties, in the other place.

In that time we have had a number of different administrations, that is, over the last four elections—2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014—where the party that has formed government has had around 30 per cent to 35 per cent of the primary vote, and in the other place South Australians have consistently—or at least two-thirds of them—not voted for the governing party. That ought to tell the government yet again that by dint of having a majority in the other place the people of South Australia are not confident in appointing the governing party of this assembly into a position of having control of the parliament.

Without going into all of the arguments about what has happened at the elections and whether the ALP should be forming government—we will leave that to the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission who are considering those matters at present, as it would otherwise be a very long discourse—I make the point that the government have come to us a third time, now here in 2016 after attempts in 2005 and 2009, to do this again in the face of what is absolutely certain.

That is, the public have never endorsed a stripping of power from the Legislative Council. They have never endorsed the reigning government having control of both houses; that is, the government also having control of the parliament. In fact, they have given a convincing vote to endorse the principle that the parliament should be independent of the government and, indeed, if we have responsible government, that that government is responsible to the parliament and, in being so, is responsible to the people of South Australia.

Let us have a quick look at what they tried to do. In 2005, I can recall the late Greg Kelton, who was a senior political reporter in Adelaide, running a front-page story on 24 November, which was titled 'Rann to call referendum for 2010; abolish the upper house'. The content of that article included:

Premier Mike Rann wants Parliament's Upper House abolished and will ask South Australians to bring about the greatest electoral system change in the state's history…

Labor, frustrated by legislative delays and the watering down of new laws in the Legislative Council, will begin moves to get rid of it after the March 18 election that polls suggest it is likely to win.

One has to ask the question: if the Legislative Council was such a danger, was such a threat to Mr Rann's government, would he not have actually presented some examples of where there had been a frustration of legislation, where there had been a rejection which brought his government to a standstill, to be able to justify this? Curiously, members would remember the great period of time when Mr Ralph Clarke, a former member of this house, had been embroiled in litigation with the Australian Labor Party.

On the very same day that we had this exclusive story by Mr Kelton outlining the premier's announcement, on that very day, Ms Edith Pringle, a former partner of Mr Ralph Clarke, was to present evidence to the select committee of the Legislative Council—what a coincidence! Isn't that amazing! Could the Advertiser exclusive have been some attempt to divert the public attention? The evidence of the day, the whole tawdry issue, frankly, was a matter which ultimately spilled over into this house, as I recall.

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Ms CHAPMAN: The then attorney-general—

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, no interjections! Order!

Ms CHAPMAN: The then attorney-general was embroiled—

Mr Knoll interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. Member for Schubert, you are called to order and I warn you. No interjections, either side. We have to listen.

Ms CHAPMAN: The reality is that the whole tawdry scandal later embroiled the attorney-general of the day in respect of his involvement as to whether that case proceeded or not, ultimately, in the Supreme Court. In question time, I can recall here raising questions with the then treasurer, who was then the acting premier, about what action had been taken by the government and what knowledge they had about certain allegations of promises of board positions and the like. So, we had this whole tawdry business, but how coincidental that on the day that Ms Pringle was to give evidence to the select committee in respect of the Legislative Council, we have a situation where this suddenly hits the front page. It did not actually do much after that—that is, the premier of the day did not do much. It is fair to say that, following the election then in 2006—

The Hon. J.M. Rankine interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No interjections.

Ms CHAPMAN: —the ALP, during that election, failed to increase their number of MLCs elected from four, and so of course the premier announced another threat to abolish the Legislative Council.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Wright is warned for the first time.

Ms CHAPMAN: So, they missed out. They did quite well in the House of Assembly, I have to say, in 2006, but I make the point that they did not improve their position in the Legislative Council, so they did not get control of the Legislative Council. So, of course, out comes the old chestnut: the renewed threat to abolish the Legislative Council.

It does raise the question of whether the continued call for public debate and reform in this area by the government (conveniently, it seems, when there is bad news coming on the front page of papers) is also designed to try to bring the Legislative Councillors to heel, that is, to get them to almost be intimidated into being compliant with government legislation. In other words, 'You naughty children; if you don't do as you are told, if you don't pass legislation in the terms that we want, then we will punish you and you will be stripped of power or abolished altogether.'

This sort of intimidation by this constant threat of that occurring that I think is reprehensible on behalf of the government, because each time they come up with these threats, they do not produce any new evidence to suggest that legislation has been butchered, that it has occurred in abundance, that it has been rejected, that the economy of this state is grinding to a halt, or that government action is paralysed—none of these things occur. So, the Legislative Council goes about its lawful business of making amendments and obviously offering advice in respect of reform to proposals that have gone through this house, most of which is quite helpful, but almost all of which reflects only a tiny little piece of the total legislation.

On average, something like 98 per cent of the legislation that goes through this parliament is untouched. Some of it is amended, and the Legislative Council has some discussions. Sometimes we have meetings of the houses to be able to deal with an impasse through a deadlock process, but over 98 per cent of that legislation ultimately goes through. So, we are talking about a tiny little piece of legislation. That is the general legislation, let alone money bills, which are the subject of this legislation, this bill proposing to have a new format. So, we had the threat sitting there again.

We then came up to 2009, and the attorney-general of the day, who is now the Speaker, introduced the Constitution (Reform of Legislative Council and Settlement of Deadlocks on Legislation) Amendment Bill into this house. The aim of that bill was to amend the Constitution Act 1934 to reduce the number of members of the Legislative Council from 22 to 16. Further, the term of MLCs would be reduced from eight years to four years, to be served jointly with members of the House of Assembly. Finally, the bill also sought to replace the current deadlock provision and leave it to the House of Assembly to determine whether the position the Legislative Council has taken on the deadlock bill would result in a double dissolution and general election. The President of the Legislative Council was also to be given a deliberative vote on all questions instead of on the current casting vote.

The reforms were not dissimilar to what is before us again today, although they do not cover the complement of the Legislative Council in number or term of office, or indeed the changing of the voting position for the President of the Legislative Council. But, the core elements of dealing with settlement of deadlocks on legislation were covered in that tranche of proposed reform.

Well, we know that that also came to skidding halt, but it served its purpose. It served its purpose back in 2009 in the lead up to the 2010 election, where two things were happening. One was the premier of the day was saying to the people of South Australia that he was committed to getting rid of the Legislative Council. When he thought that he could not get that through, he thought he would introduce some form of reform. Leading up to the 2010 election, we had another scandal. We had the premier under pressure in respect of his alleged improper conduct with another person.

So, what did the government do? What it usually does: pulls out the old chestnut and throws onto the front page of the paper announcements about getting rid of the Legislative Council, which they then modified, as I said, down to the reform agenda. Anyway, that did not last long, and so it was off the table again. What happens now? Now we come with no new example of misuse or inappropriate conduct by the Legislative Council other than the fact that they have had the audacity to suggest that there should be some amendments to some of the government's bills, or, indeed, in certain circumstances, that they would not support them, but in a minor number.

The Legislative Council has never, to my knowledge, in the time I have been here refused to pass an appropriation bill or a budget bill—not once from 2002 to 2016. I am in the chamber most of the time, and I am involved in debates on a number of the bills. From time to time, we debate them here, we sometimes get amendments here, they go to another place, they have amendments, and they come back. In all that time, whilst there has been opposition to parts of the budget bill, the appropriation bills and supply bills have passed.

We have always ensured that money is allocated from the Consolidated Account to ensure that the public sector has continued to be paid. We have always passed legislation that supports the supply arising out of the budget allocations. There have been very few occasions that I can recall where we have opposed the introduction of a new tax or a new law which was inconsistent with what had been promised by the government.

One of those, I recall, was when we objected to being introduced into a budget bill the change of obligation for the payment of legal costs in prosecuted cases by the police department in the lower courts. The government, in a budget bill, wanted to change the onus of obligation in respect of costs. Instead of costs following the cause, as such, there would be a presumption that costs would be recovered by the prosecution in the reverse circumstances. We just said, that is a fundamental attempt to change a current legal position, it is not something that should be in the money bill that is being presented to the parliament, and we objected to it. That, ultimately, was successful and it was excised. There was also a biosecurity fee that the government proposed to introduce. We said, 'Well, hang on a minute, this is completely new, this is something that hasn't been agreed to, announced or proposed, and which you are wanting to introduce,' and we said no.

The other one I can recall more recently, arising out of last year's budget, was when the government wanted to introduce a transport development levy (I think they called it), which was a glossed up car park tax that was going to increase the cost of parking in the metropolitan area of Adelaide to thousands of people on a daily basis. The government kept trying to put its head in the sand and pretend that owners of car parks were going to put that up and absorb that cost, which was a complete nonsense. There were going to be public servants, nurses, people coming into the city every day, working shift work particularly, who had no access to public transport and they would be needing parking facilities, for which they were going to be paying this onerous tax.

We said no, this had not been discussed with the people of South Australia and it was not acceptable that they just add this on. When I say 'we' I do not mean just the Legislative Council, as on this side of the house we made a decision that we would not accept that imposition. It was wrong and it was without notice. It was inconsistent with promises that had been made and we were not going to break our commitment to South Australians that we would keep the government accountable where it was going to mischievously try to prop up its own incompetence by introducing new taxes.

Otherwise, generally, these bills have passed through, largely by convention, to ensure that there is the continuation of government business, with the expectation that passed the government itself would be brought to account at the next election. Sadly, that does not always happen, but nevertheless that is the practice that we have respected on this side of the house and which we have complied with, unless the government has gone beyond that remit.

Here is the third attempt that the government has introduced with this bill to deal with a sin that has not been committed. I say to members of the house: on what proper basis can you ask us to even consider a reform of a time-honoured structure of parliamentary scrutiny without any example of misuse or practice of which is now going to undermine the proper administration of government in this state? It is without principle to even ask us to do that, when, on the face of it, the only real reason it is being done is to, yet again, deflect the people of South Australia from the real issue in this state at this time.

The real issue in this state at present is that we are in a terrible financial state. We are on the bottom of the pack as far as a ladder of opportunity amongst the other states. We are abysmal in comparison to the performance at the federal government level and South Australians, on a daily basis, are living in an environment where we have the highest unemployment in the country. The youth unemployment, for those members who are representing the northern suburbs of Adelaide, is just woeful. It has produced a social blight on the future opportunities of the children and families in those areas which is a stain that I do not think we are going to eradicate for decades to come. However, we must try.

South Australia is in a mess financially. We have the Treasurer of the state telling us that we are going to have a $2.7 billion surplus in the forward estimates. I can remember treasurer Foley (the former member for Port Adelaide) making the same promises: I can remember treasurer Weatherill making the same promises when he took on the mantle of both treasurer and premier at the same time. We had promises of 100,000 jobs, we had promises of budget surpluses and we had promises of fiscal responsibility in the budgetary administration of this government and South Australians have been let down over and over again. Now, when they are in a complete and utter mess, they have made threats in the last 24 hours to increase taxes ('nasty state taxes', as described by the Premier) and even close hospitals.

We are in a mess and the government's answer is to start getting stuck into the Legislative Council again to try to deflect attention from the woeful predicament that South Australians face with families whose children at the end of their education have to find prospects of employment, let alone career advancement, in other jurisdictions and even overseas, with the consequence that, of course, we lose those young people, frequently forever, being able to contribute to the economy of South Australia.

Just last week I spoke to a very significant player in the population and migration professional world and he confirmed, again, that in the last financial year we lost a net 3,500 people to interstate migration. That is, 3,500 (mostly young people) more left the state than came here. Whilst the demographic of our population becomes older and there is more concentration of older people, we also have fewer people to create the economic wealth of the future. This is a very bad sign for South Australia and here we are having to debate this because the government thinks that the most important thing to debate in this parliament on the first day back is constitutional reform.

It appears from the Premier that the second most important thing, vis-a-vis his announcement today, is the bill he proposes to move in parliament to deal with discrimination reforms for the lesbian, gay and bisexual community—which is not unimportant, do not get me wrong, but that was tabled on 1 December last year and could have been progressed at that point. But the Premier put it on the table and it was out for discussion and the very first thing he did was to stand up today and announce that he is going to progress that bill.

Rome is burning. South Australia is in a mess. There will be no future for our children and grandchildren unless this government get their heads out of the sand and understand the serious predicament we are in and not have these bread and circus sideshows such as introducing constitutional reform which has been demonstrably rejected not only by this parliament but by the people of South Australia repeatedly at elections and convincingly at conventions, and documented as being voted down on prior occasions. They bring nothing new to the table yet they expect us to have a debate on something which is nothing but a red herring.

I want to contrast one last thing. It seems that when it suits the government they are quite happy to have a Legislative Council, so just let me go to the flip side. After the debacle we had by the resignation and, ultimately, retirement of the Hon. Bernie Finnigan in the other place (the Legislative Council)—a person who had been preselected and promoted and befriended by plenty of people in the ALP sitting here in this chamber—we then had a joint sitting to replace Mr Finnigan. The government could not get over there quickly enough to endorse a motion to present Mr Malinauskas to be—

Mr Duluk: The next premier of South Australia.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Davenport is warned for the first time.

Ms CHAPMAN: —an honourable member of that place. They could not get over there quickly enough to nominate the new golden boy of the ALP into the other place. When it suits them they are happy to jump in there and rush in with somebody. Would it not have been consistent if this government was genuine about—

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Newland is reminded that he is on one point.

Ms CHAPMAN: To go over there, give applause to the work of the Legislative Council, the important contribution that their new golden boy was going to make in the Legislative Council. So, while the opportunity was there to promote their golden boy, that was a place of significance. They announced all of the great things that he had done and that he was going to do from his position in the Legislative Council—because that is what he has been elected to; that is what he was nominated for by the government, from the ALP, to be the replacement member.

The Premier walked over to the Legislative Council and stood up to promote their golden boy, their man of reform, protector of penalty rates and blah, blah, blah—all the things he is going to do—and did so at a time when only the month before he had tabled a bill to nuke them. I just find the whole thing farcical. It is absolutely farcical that the government would come to us and try to present a case for a reduction in the power and responsibility of a house to which they have just admitted their golden boy. What a joke.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are you seeking leave to continue your remarks?

Ms CHAPMAN: No.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.R. Kenyon.