Hughes Darren: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9261] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 Thank you for returning to rule on this matter. It is an area of incredible disappointment to the Opposition in respect of the treatment of Opposition amendments to this legislation. It falls into two areas but it is based on the idea that the only ability that an Opposition has to rely on through our Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings is the ability to make speeches in opposition to legislation or to propose amendments to offer alternatives to the Committee or to the House—in this case to the Committee—in respect of legislation before it. Taken to their extraordinary extent this could see the Parliament ground to a halt as both the Chairman and the Leader of the House have said while we were debating this issue previously. But that does not happen because although the rules might allow for an enormous amount of material to come by way of amendments points of order or seeking leave to table documents for example those things do not happen because there is a relationship between the Government and the Opposition that allows the smooth passage of legislation within reason. 
Occasionally that relationship does not exist and the Opposition has to use what is available to it in order to make its point. For example if there is an inability to ask Ministers questions at question time the Opposition has to use its only tools which are protected in its Speakers’ rulings and the Standing Orders and for which you have a responsibility as the protector of the minority in your position as Speaker. 
I know that you commented at the end of last year about the number of amendments on a particular piece of legislation but that was within the context of bills never having been seen before by the Opposition the extended use of urgency and things that impacted from a wide variety of angles on the proceedings and good management of the House either by actions from the Government or actions from the Opposition. 
There are two points. The first is the issue of the use by the Government of the Standing Order for fiscal aggregates. There was a discussion earlier and I want to briefly bring you up to date with that— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I urge the member to stay focused. I have not yet actually heard the particular point of order that I have been recalled to rule on and fiscal aggregates is not the matter that I understand is currently the procedure that has been delaying the Committee. I urge the member to focus on the issue of order that he wishes me to rule on. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Thank you Mr Speaker. I am sorry. That will be a matter about amendments that we do quite genuinely wish to take up with you. But let me come to the matter for which you have been recalled. It is the ruling out of amendments that of themselves are in order that have been submitted by members—in this case by the Hon Steve Chadwick and Moana Mackey. After the first vote on the first amendment the Chairman then moved to rule out all subsequent amendments. There is an argument about whether they are substantially different; I know Mr Mallard has a view about that. 
But the reason I wanted you to be recalled is that it is our view that amendments must stand on their own merits and that if there is the ability for an Opposition to put forward an amendment that amendment itself should be judged regardless of what other environmental factors are going on that day with regard to how many amendments there are. An amendment must be considered by the Committee regardless of how many other amendments there are. 
I can give you a very recent example of that from 13 March 2007 on the child discipline legislation. There were amendments to change the commencement date of that bill once it had received its third reading and its Royal assent which would change the date on which it would become law. There were many many amendments that shifted out by a number of months the date when that legislation would come into force. All of those amendments were accepted by the Clerk’s Office and were put to the House. It is all available in the  
Journals of the House 
. The only time when that was interrupted was when the Government chose to support one of the amendments in order for the other ones to become inconsequential because a decision had been made by the Committee. The Committee of the whole House has faced exactly this sort of situation before and it has upheld the process of its rules to allow the Opposition to be able to take those amendments through. 
Our argument is that if these amendments are simply wiped out because they are considered to be similar then that takes away a right of the Opposition to signal its disagreement with legislation. But also in the position where the Government is a minority Government the Chair cannot possibly know whether further down the list of amendments there is a majority for a different date. I guess that is where Mr Mallard will comment on the substantially different argument because in these amendments there are differences that are spread over many years. It may well be that in the position where the Government is in a minority as it has been since 1998 there will be a time when one of the amendments might be successful. It seems wrong to me to rule one out or to rule them all out on the basis that the first one happened not to be accepted by the Committee. 
I will end by reiterating what I said at the beginning that an Opposition has very few protections in the Chamber and to ride over the top of those because on a particular day it happens to be inconvenient due to the amount of work by way of the number of amendments that has been put forward is quite wrong. This is not something that happens regularly in our Parliament. There is a self-correcting mechanism to the whole thing and I think that it would be wrong to take away the last protections that an Opposition has when we are in the Committee of the whole House in a minority sense.