Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, I certainly support your ruling. I rise primarily in my capacity as Deputy President in support of the statement you have just read to the chamber.

Mr President, you have covered a number of matters that I was going to cover so I will not go over those in detail. However, I was concerned yesterday during the debate. Again, with all respect to my colleague Senator Boswell, the subject matter of the debate has been lost in the fact that we are only dealing with the dissent in you not granting precedence to the motion moved by Senator Brown. This is what the Senate needs to clearly understand, because there has been some confusion with the two motions and there has been a crossover of debate, and that is what disturbs me as a custodian, with you, of the practices and procedures of the Senate. Mr President, I believe you have rightly ruled in what you have said and you have also moved towards addressing some of the confusion about the debate.

I will highlight what happened. Senator Kroger wrote to you, Mr President, prior to 23 November last year setting out a matter of privilege and asking for that to be given precedence. That is the first trigger in this whole debate. The second matter was that you gave a statement on 23 November giving precedence to Senator Kroger's letter, followed up by a motion that went through the Senate on the following day, 24 November. That motion was then disposed of in that particular point in time by resolution of the Senate to give precedence to a matter of privilege raised by Senator Kroger referring to Senators Brown and Milne. That was dealt with there and then. That is the first item.

The second item is that, subsequent to that, Senator Brown wrote to you again—I am not sure of the time he wrote to you but I believe it was subsequent to that motion—and sought precedence on a matter of privilege for Senator Boswell. You then reported back to the Senate on 25 November and indicated that no, you would not give precedence.