Victorian Parliament suspended as Speaker walks out..
.. the VIDEO you will find interesting ..
Date November 14, 2013
Richard Willingham, Josh Gordon and Henrietta Cook
----- .. the embed is a shorter version of my subbed VIDEO 5:06, same stuff, more .. skip to it if you want .. guarantee of reminders of some US states .. otherwise, a short intro .. just learned Ken is a plumber, like your Joe claimed to be .. Ken, the Liberal conservative is the Speaker ..
--- Kenneth Maurice Smith (born 30 December 1944) is an Australian politician who is currently the member for Bass in the Victorian Legislative Assembly and Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly.
The conservative Liberals are in power in the state of Victoria. Ken Smith is a conservative Liberal rooster (well, like somwhat) .. firstly, the state of Ken's fate ..
--- Victoria (abbreviated as Vic.) is a state in the south-east of Australia. Victoria is Australia's most densely populated state and its second-most populous state overall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_%28Australia%29 ] -----
Two minutes of parliamentary uproar Speaker Ken Smith suspends proceedings after Victoria's parliament descends into untrammeled name-calling, shouting and invective.
State Parliament has been rendered unworkable and the Napthine government's legislative agenda has ground to a halt, with Speaker Ken Smith unable to control the lower house.
Mr Smith was forced to shut down the Legislative Assembly on Thursday after just nine minutes of debate, underlining the influence of independent Geoff Shaw, who dropped a bomb on Tuesday by declaring he no longer had confidence in the Speaker.
Ken Smith adjourned Parliament at 11.30am after Labor repeatedly attempted to test the numbers by questioning his authority. Photo: Jason South
Mr Smith adjourned Parliament at 11.30am after Labor repeatedly attempted to test the numbers by questioning his authority.
In a blow to Premier Denis Napthine's legislative agenda, the government passed only one bill out of seven planned.
Dr Napthine labelled Thursday's events ''a stunt'' and rejected the idea that Mr Smith had lost control of Parliament.
Ken Smith walked out of State Parliament because of MPs' bad beahviour, he says. Photo: Jason South
Mr Smith lashed out at Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews, describing his behaviour as appalling. ''He is not showing any leadership qualities at all,'' he said.
After two attempts to enforce order by suspending Parliament, Mr Smith announced he was closing down the lower house until November 26.
The Speaker normally ejects MPs if they are out of line. He can also name MPs if they continue to defy his orders, which requires a vote, a scenario that Labor wanted to generate to formally test support for Mr Smith.
During the second break, Mr Shaw, who reiterated his support for the Premier, strode out of Parliament and caught a train back to Frankston.
''It's up to the Speaker to decide how Parliament is run, but if he allowed that to happen, then we've got some issues, haven't we?'' Mr Shaw told Fairfax Media.
Mr Shaw, who is due to face court on Wednesday, said that if the Speaker could not do his job he should consider his position.
''Just because someone thinks you should resign doesn't mean you should. Here we have a case, though, that the majority of parliamentarians have no confidence in the Speaker,'' he said.
A defiant Mr Smith later said he had been elected to be the Speaker ''and that's the job I will continue to do. I wasn't prepared to put up with the behaviour that the Labor Party was going on with.''
The shambles in Parliament ended a bad week for the Premier after a Newspoll showed his government trailing Labor 47-53.
Dr Napthine said Labor had ''hijacked democracy''.
''[It] is purely and simply the political, childish tactics of Daniel Andrews and the Labor Party. They ought to grow up,'' he said.
He denied Mr Shaw was holding the government to ransom, and indicated that the independent MP would vote for the government's business program in the next sitting week.
"It's not Mr Shaw's fault. Mr Shaw is a relatively new member of parliament and he has only seen Parliament operate when there is a regular government business program. I think Mr Shaw would have learnt a lot from this week,'' Dr Napthine said.
'''He would see that this lack of a government business program is very disruptive to Parliament."
But the Premier and deputy Liberal leader Louise Asher, who speaks to Mr Shaw regularly, would not say whether Mr Shaw had been given any assurances over his concerns about security at Parliament.
Dr Napthine denied Parliament was unworkable but conceded it ''was at its worst'' on Thursday. ''We are not running a wait-and-see government, we are getting on with the job.''
Mr Andrews said shutting down Parliament and blaming the opposition was a desperate measure and again showed how much power Mr Shaw wielded.
''The shrill and angry and frankly desperate attempts of Denis Napthine to blame everyone else just doesn't cut it,'' Mr Andrews said. ''This government is out of control, this government is an embarrassment.''
Mr Andrews said Mr Smith and Dr Napthine had done everything to avoid having a vote because they knew the Speaker did not have a majority of support in the lower house.
.. VIDEO ..ANALYSIS Treasurer Joe Hockey has blocked the takeover of grain handler GrainCorp by US multi-national ADM, attracting the condemnation of Labor.
Just one letter and a tiny apostrophe were all that were missing from Joe Hockey's reasoning when he scotched the bid by the American giant, Archer-Daniels-Midland to swallow up Australia's top listed agri-business, GrainCorp (GNC).
Whereas the Treasurer explained the 100 per cent take-over was not in the “national” interest, the more pressing concern for the Coalition under threat of massive internal hemorrhaging over the issue, was that the acquisition was not in the Nationals' interests. And therefore not in the government's political interests.
Treasurer Joe Hockey announces his rejection of the GrainCorp bid on Friday. Photo: Peter Braig
It may have escaped the attention of many city voters in recent months, but the ADM move has been huge news in the bush. Tension within the Coalition has been extreme – a delicate situation for any Liberal-Nationals government, but particularly so for one as young and as chest-beatingly pro-business in its rhetoric.
Tony Abbott famously declared Australia was under new management on election night and was now open for business.
But the decision before the economically rationalist Treasurer was fraught with danger.
Nationals leader, Warren Truss, and his likely successor, Barnaby Joyce had made no secret of their strong opposition to the take-over. Privately, the Nats were incandescent, threatening all kinds of mayhem if the sale was approved.
Truss of course is also Deputy Prime Minister, so his public indications carried a lot of influence. They also raised a few eyebrows because Hockey was being told in no uncertain terms that the junior Coalition partner would not support the approval of ADM's bid.
The American agricultural giant's $3.4 billion bid was generous and came with the promise of hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure upgrades.
But growers worried that at just 4 per cent of ADM's total worth, GrainCorp would lack the clout within the multinational to see their interests protected. And they worried that they would wind up paying for those upgrades anyway in higher handling fees and perhaps lower returns.
Weighing heavily on Hockey and the entire government though was the signal a rejection would transmit.
Just a day after floating the alternatives for Qantas of greater foreign ownership, or partial nationalisation, the ADM application sends a potentially confusing message to international investors.
Business attracted by Australia's stability, its triple-A credit ratings, and its pro-business rhetoric, will now have to weigh those symbolic aspects against the reality of a government that has just knocked back a solid bid for a company and a sector that is badly in need of capital investment.
Politically, Hockey has chosen the path of least resistance. That doesn't automatically make it wrong, but it lifts the onus on the new government to explain in a detailed way why this particular bit of foreign investment is against the national interest, when other foreign investment is not.
Government, as the Prime Minister has noted, is about making the tough decisions.
This one appears to have been taken on the easy side of the ledger.
The Nationals are happy because once again their particular brand of protected capitalism – sometimes called agrarian socialism – has prevailed.
Hockey said he would not be bullied by anyone in making his final call on the GrainCorp bid.
Many in the business community may now be wondering what happened and what it might say about the character of the Abbott Coalition government.
Former treasurer Wayne Swan tweeted: “No more sanctimonious Hockey lectures about Australia being open for business or strong economic management, weak populist decision”.
Ouch!
Inevitably Hockey was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
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