Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise to support your ruling. The former Leader of the House, when he was Leader of the House, moved in one motion—not two—to suspend standing orders, demand action and refer the member for Perth to the Privileges Committee. This happened in a very similar fashion, the member for Warringah might recall. He expressed no opposition to that. He did exactly this, and your ruling is consistent with the determination of the parliament at that time—with one exception. We have done this properly; they did not. They did it in one motion. We have done it in accordance with standing orders.

What this motion that you have ruled in order will do is ask the Leader of the Opposition to come into this parliament and to retract, on behalf of the opposition, three statements, because in the last three days we have seen unprecedented attacks from the opposition on Australia’s financial regulators. On Tuesday the Leader of the Opposition called for Dr Ken Henry, the Secretary of the Treasury, to be sacked. On Wednesday Senator Abetz called the Secretary of the Treasury a liar, and now, on Thursday, we have the member for Canning alleging that the Governor of the Reserve Bank is politically biased and incompetent. This is an unprecedented attack on—

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