Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make a brief contribution to this debate and, while the member for North Sydney is in the chamber, reflect on the historical context of due process. I will not be supporting the amendment moved by the member for Sturt to the motion to suspend standing and sessional orders for similar reasons to those of the member for Melbourne. I would appreciate it if the member for North Sydney stayed because I think there are some issues that he was involved in historically that may shed some light on the process that we are involved in at the moment. I endorse the comments of the members for Melbourne and Lyne on the opposition's attempt to compel a member to face the chamber.

The member for North Sydney and I go back a fair way. There are certain parallels that I think he may well remember in another hung parliament where my vote was the determining vote in the formation of the government. In that case it was the Liberal government of Nick Greiner in New South Wales, and I still have great respect for Nick Greiner. The member for North Sydney would remember because he was one of the messenger boys back in those days. I appreciated his company then as I do now. He would well remember the way in which the dogs of politics turned on Nick Greiner at that time, including—and this is where I think it is important in terms of the debate we are having here now in a hung parliament—the independent members of that chamber. He may also remember that I was not one of those who took the judicial process into the parliament and judged an individual—Nick Greiner, the Premier of the state—before the appropriate processes of the law were applied. In that case, it was the accusations that were before the ICAC in New South Wales.

In that case there were demands in the press, as there are now; and demands of the political process, as there are now. The Liberals were in government and Labor in opposition, so they were on different sides of the chamber, but the same game was being played. At that time the three independent members of the parliament were playing the same game as the opposition. In a sense, what we are being asked to do here—

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