During question time on Tuesday, Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley raised a point of order around the fact Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had left the chamber as Tanya Plibersek was answering a query. Milton Dick, speaker and current leader of the Absolute Unit caucus, detected a note of mischief in her interjections:
Resume your seat. That is not a point of order. As the member knows, there are times when she leaves the chamber as well. Members do leave the chamber. I don’t think that’s helpful or appropriate. Those sorts of points of order are disorderly, and if the deputy leader continues with that, she will be asked to leave the chamber …
And certainly, if she was worried about this, she must have been absolutely fuming when a flurry of Coalition MPs tried to flee Parliament after the doors had been locked for a division. In their attempts to get out, an attendant was shoved against a door and injured their arm.
“We as a House cannot be in a situation — out of respect for the staff who work in this building — where, when you ask people to lock the doors, they have members of Parliament physically pushing past them to get out of the room,” Leader of the House Tony Burke complained.
The MPs in question — Dan Tehan, Angus Taylor, Andrew Hastie, Zoe McKenzie, Ted O’Brien, Llew O’Brien and Sam Birrell — apologised.
It’s perhaps the most crowded attempt, but this isn’t the first time we’ve seen such behaviour.
Tony Abbott
Who else but former prime minister Tony Abbott would be the modern pioneer for this technique? Back in 2012, in an attempt to negate “tainted” support from suspended Labor MP Craig Thomson, then-opposition leader Abbott and then-manager of Coalition business Christopher Pyne sprinted for the doors after Thomson joined the crossbench to oppose a government gag motion. In perhaps a surprising development, Pyne, who famously declared his greatest exertion was once having to get his “own lemon for a gin and tonic”, appears to have outrun the relentlessly athletic Abbott.
Pyne made it out in time, while Abbott was ordered back to his seat.
Victorian Liberals
We don’t want to imply politicians always run away from work — sometimes they show up when you’d least expect it. Back in 2018, chaotic moments courtesy of the Victorian Liberals were comparatively rare. So it was shocking when the Andrews government offered a pair to Liberal upper house MPs Bernie Finn and Craig Ondarchie, who, having said they did not want to sit on Good Friday for religious reasons, suddenly arrived in time to vote down a government bill.
Labor’s leader in the Upper House Gavin Jennings was apoplectic.
“We had members praying in the Parliament last night to be with their families, to be with their church communities on the most holiest days in the Christian calendar,” he said. “And those people who prayed in front of us — who begged us to let them go — returned after we’d given them a pair at the 12th hour … to betray parliamentary convention.”
Ok, that is a very funny story about Pyne 🙂 and much appreciated considering the gravity of the situation – three of those people apologized for breaching the rule but did not apologize for injuring the attendant. They cared not one jot about the fact that they actually injured a colleague at work!!!!!!
The people who did not apologize for injuring a colleague going about their work were the Member for Wannon (Dan Tehan), Member for Hume (Angus Taylor) and Member for Fairfax (Ted O’Brien).
Ted O’Brien didn’t even realize that he should pretend to be sorry even after one of the perpetrators did have the grace to apologize for his behaviour and the resulting injury.
The Speaker needs to get Tehan, Taylor and O’Brien back to apologize to the attendant and to the nation.
Once again I find myself wondering what has happened to the Jenkins Report?
Angus sprinting for the door; I find that funny. Angus running for anything I find more disturbing.
Angus would run at the Olympics for the Cayman Islands.
Show him a bag of money or a nice juicy rort.
Then stand well back, the vacuum left behind in his wake could pull the windscreen out of a Bushmaster.
Agree – esp. your last two lines.
They should be made an example of the “unacceptable face of entitlement” and the Jenkins Report would be the natural hook for improvement of trough behaviour.
I recall seeing the Abbott/Pyne dash as it happened, hilarious.
This week’s incident shows those Coalition MPs to be churlish, childish & aggressive. And they contravened parliamentary protocol by attempting to flee. Now named & shamed.
Now named. But I very much doubt that any of them has the grace to be ashamed.
Certainly not shamed. Only a couple of them seemed to be genuinely sorry. The others looked and sounded like they had been hauled up before the head master/mistress many times in their youth and were well practised in the ‘I couldn’t give a stuff’ version of a non-apology.
The culture of ‘man children’ that has been encouraged to avoid active ethics, morals and responsibilities vs. performative?
I reckon they should be taken out and flogged to be honest. I was utterly bemused. Fleeing a vote???? Or did they not have the gumption to abstain? Of course interesting to see that Taylor and Tehan were among the culprits. What a collection of prats. I am glad my year six students were not in the gallery.
I suspect that their panic stricken departure was a rodent cunning plan.
That way they could say, hand on heart, “I wasn’t there for the vote”.
If the topic being voted on, becomes a negative for them in their electorate.
So the Liberals’ standards of behaviour take another dive which is pretty bad considering where they are starting from. The attendant’s injuries were fortunately not too serious but it may prove to be a good thing. I don’t believe this kindergarten behaviour should be swept under the carpet yet. Repercussions need to follow.
Bells are rung for some time, to allow members to get to the Chamber for a Division, before the doors are locked. What were these Members doing during that time whci meant they had to rush out?. Did they decide at the very last minute that they weren’t going to vote?
It’s mind-boggling stuff.
Hardly Honourable and another woman injured by the LNP Front Bench united in stunt politics.
It is an improvement in LNP behaviour. Normally they try to drive their victims to suicide or if they are women they want to shoot them.