News location:

Canberra Today 15°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

The Hon Bron’s wobbly start

THE new Speaker, the Honourable Bronwyn Bishop MHR, favours “honourable members of parliament” over the “pejorative term – “politicians”.

Bishop’s long-standing experience as a Senator and as a Member of the House of Representatives holds her in good stead for this important role. Furthermore, her understanding of the rules of parliament, the Standing Orders, combined with her extensive knowledge of the workings of both houses of parliament and her tenacious approach in parliamentary committees, provide plenty of reason to expect a highly successful role as Speaker.

Speaker Bishop has determined that she will participate in party room meetings – the Coalition equivalent to Caucus. At these meetings MPs and Senators determine the direction and approach of their role in government.

The Speaker argues that she should be able to participate as a way of looking after her electorate. However, she is now the Speaker and should take a page from the British system where, to ensure the Speaker will not be partisan, the practice is that no other party runs against the incumbent in their electorate.

In Australia, this is not the practice. However, the message should be about staying aloof from party politics. Secondly, with 150 members of parliament in the lower house and 75 senators in the upper house, it is not apparent how Mrs Bishop will bring about influence within her party room meetings.

With the former government bringing the role of Speaker into disrepute on the appointment of Peter Slipper, there is an even greater need for the Speaker to be above partisan politics.

The real challenge of having the Speaker in the party room meetings is that the Government ministers and Coalition backbenchers will be able to use their time to influence the approach she takes to chairing the parliament.

In announcing the candidature of Mrs Bishop, the Prime Minister stated that he expected her to be impartial and, where necessary, to even pull him back into line.

However, her first test in the role does not bode well for her as Speaker.

The Prime Minister has been in the practice of referring to the Leader of the Opposition as “Electricity Bill”. It is a put-down attempt to continue the election tactic of using the hip pocket as an excuse for undoing Labor’s action on climate change.

The Prime Minister even conceded in a doorstop interview that he considered it would “probably be ruled out of order in the Parliament, I accept that, and obviously, when I am in the Parliament, I am subject to the Standing Orders as interpreted by Speaker Bronwyn Bishop”.

His Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne, was not fazed by his leader’s comment when he introduced the concept into the chamber. It was not ruled out of order by the Speaker.

Even when the Opposition countered with a motion of dissent in the Speaker’s ruling, she was unmoved. The Coalition backed their Speaker. On the first day of real parliamentary debate, the rhetoric about a fairer parliament simply went down the gurgler.

Perhaps Bishop has been born again and has turned a corner from her feisty, aggressive approach in committees and in the chamber, but she has a long way to go if she believes she can convert others to the same belief system.

 

Michael Moore was an independent member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (1989 to 2001) and was minister for health

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Share this

Leave a Reply

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews