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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-11-11 Daily Xml
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Members

MEMBERS' BEHAVIOUR

The SPEAKER (14:15): The Speaker or any other occupant of the chair is responsible for the maintenance of order in this house. Standing order 144 states:

The Speaker is responsible for the orderly conduct of proceedings of the House and for maintaining its decorum and dignity.

This responsibility and the application of other standing orders, and the practice and traditions of the house, is the way disorder is dealt with and orderly proceedings are restored. Ultimately, the chair is reliant on the willingness of members to obey the rules of the house.

In maintaining the decorum of the house, it has been the practice of successive Speakers to, when necessary, elevate calls to order, when disorder is persistent, to a higher level of warnings to members. The issuing of warnings to members is not in standing orders, but successive Speakers and members seem to have accepted that after a third warning the next resort of the Speaker in trying to restore order is the application of standing order 137, the naming of a member.

As House of Representatives Practice (4th edition, page 507) says, the naming of a member is not the ruling of the chair; it is, in effect, 'an appeal to the House to support the Chair in maintaining order'.

I am of the opinion that there has been a level of disorder so serious in this house that the practice of issuing warnings must be dispensed with so that the chair can seek the support of the house in maintaining order. Therefore, members cannot rely on my issuing any warnings prior to being named if, as standing order 137 provides:

If any Member:

1. persistently or wilfully obstructs the business of the House, or

2. persistently or wilfully refuses to conform to any Standing Order of the House, or

3. refuses to accept the authority of the Chair, or

4. having used unparliamentary language refuses either to explain its use to the satisfaction of the Speaker or to withdraw it and, if necessary in the opinion of the Speaker, apologise for its use.

Therefore, I may or may not issue warnings to you. You may be named without warnings.

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