Wednesday, 15 September 2021

 Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (13:41): I move, by leave:

That so much of standing, sessional and temporary orders be suspended to allow the following arrangements to come into effect at the end of this sitting week and remain in place until 31 December 2021 for the purposes of enabling the house to continue its sittings during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Hybrid sitting

Members may participate in debate remotely using an audio-visual link as follows:

(1) The Chair must be satisfied that the quality of the audio-visual link allows the Chair to verify the identity of that Member and for the Member to participate.

(2) A Member participating remotely is not counted for the purposes of a quorum.

(3) A Member participating remotely shall not vote.

(4) Members participating remotely may do all things a Member in the Chamber may do, except—

(a) chair the debate;

(b) refuse leave;

(c) take, or speak on, a point of order unless it is taken by another member during their contribution;

(d) call the Chair’s attention to the state of the House;

(e) call for a division;

(f) vote;

(g) move a motion for the closure of debate under Standing Order 12.25 or be counted in support of a closure of debate motion under Standing Order 12.25(2); and

(h) be counted for the purposes of satisfying an absolute or special majority requirement.

(5) In order to assist Members participating remotely, the Chair will use a formal call list to allocate the call for each debate where practical and Members wishing to participate remotely may seek the call by—

(a) informing their whip, or the whip’s representative, who will inform the Chair in advance—for a Government or Opposition Member; and

(b) informing the Clerk, who will inform the Chair in advance—for any other Member.

(6) When a Member participates remotely, the Chair may exercise all their usual powers to control the debate.

(7) The Chair is given any additional powers necessary to facilitate the smooth running of the House and/or to address any technical issues, including but not limited to—

(a) stopping the clock;

(b) returning to a Member’s contribution; and

(c) re-ordering business.

(8) The President may issue formal Guidelines from time to time about remote participation which must not be inconsistent with this temporary order and must be complied with as if they are temporary orders and the President may take any action necessary should Members not abide by the Guidelines.

For the benefit of the house, this has come out of our regular meetings with leaders of the parties and representatives of the crossbench, and with that it is ready to proceed.

 Dr RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (13:42): I thank the Leader of the Government for moving this motion. I would like to move an amendment, and I am happy to speak to both the substantive motion and the amendment following it. I move:

That all the words in paragraph (3) be omitted and replaced with the following:

‘(3)   A Member participating remotely shall not vote and a Member that is not in the Chamber at the time of a division may register their opinion on the question by notifying the Clerk in writing of their opinion (either ‘Aye’ or ‘Noe’) after the commencement of the matter in the House and before the President reports the result of the vote to the House, and any such opinion will be published, separately from the results of the vote, in Hansard and the Minutes of Proceedings.’.

In speaking to both the substantive motion and the amendment, I am really glad to see this come before the house. This is the result of a motion that the house agreed to that I moved last week asking the President and the clerks to investigate what is possible in terms of hybrid online participation given the COVID situation that we are in. It is something the Parliament should be thinking about anyway in terms of facilitating participation of members, but given the need to reduce the number of members in the house, particularly should the COVID situation get worse, I think it is really important that the Parliament be prepared to sit in some sort of hybrid and remote fashion.

The advice was really welcome. It indicated and I think illustrated that we can do a lot more than we thought we could and lots more remote and online participation could actually be facilitated without too many legal or constitutional amendments, so that was really welcome. I understand there is still some caution and some concern from different members in the chamber that needs to be worked through in terms of embracing fully the advice that we received from the legal experts, but I am hopeful that this is a step in the right direction and that we can trial more and more things that would allow more online participation.

To effect a true hybrid system what you need is to reduce the number of people in the chamber. You need to be able to facilitate online, remote audiovisual link participation, like so many workplaces across the world have been able to do to allow people—

A member interjected.

Dr RATNAM: Yes, the UK and the Canadian parliaments have facilitated it, the federal Parliament as well. There are methods that have been trialled very successfully across the world. To have a hybrid system like the federal Parliament have trialled very successfully an all-chamber pairing system is actually what is needed to give that full effect. I understand that the government and the opposition are not ready to trial that at this stage. Members know I had another amendment prepared that would give some formality in a temporary order for the crossbench, for example, to develop a pairing system amongst ourselves. I understand that can happen informally, but we want the codification to give us the confidence, given we are all from different parties, and having the rules written somewhere where we could then apply them to ourselves would really help us in a situation where we needed to pair with each other, given the opposition are not willing to pair with the crossbench at this stage.

I had foreshadowed that amendment. I understand there is not an agreement on that yet, and in good faith I understand we are going to have a meeting and that that could progress over the next couple of weeks. I am really hopeful of that. I hope that the chamber will reconsider those options in future, but I think this is a really good starting point, both in the orders that the government has outlined and the amendment I have proposed. It will add strength to the system by allowing members to record their opinions should they not be able to be in the chamber. That could happen should you have to isolate or you get sick with COVID. Unfortunately with the situation at the moment I think more and more of us are going to get impacted, and it is really important that we are prepared. I thank everyone for working towards this outcome, and I really look forward to the trial of these temporary orders. Let us hope we can progress even further from this point.

 Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (13:48): I am just going to make a few brief remarks about the process by which we have arrived here. I just want to put on record my thanks to the President and to the clerks in the first instance—I do not always thank the clerks, but there we are; on this occasion I think it is well deserved—for the work that was done in some haste on the hybrid model, notwithstanding the fact that there are many other aspects that are still to be discussed.

There was a form of model that we circulated, and I still think there are a number of things that if we do sit in a hybrid format there is still a need to make sure of—that things like rapid testing and so forth are recognised in a constructive way to enable the maximum number to sit here. It is of course the case that most MPs are vaccinated and most staff are vaccinated, and in that circumstance we are safer than many other workplaces where that is still not the case.

However, the model that has been put forward by the President last week and this week is supported by the opposition. It is no secret that we have had concerns about the idea of formal pairing with the crossbench. We think it is very hard to do, and I have been quite clear with others on that. This is a significant compromise—and I accept that from all quarters—that has been proposed by Dr Ratnam. There will be the ability to register, and I thank Bruce Atkinson in particular for some of his points on this about the commencement and the end of the vote. I think that they are important points. I still put on record our caution because we see that there is a risk here that some may on occasion choose not to be in the chamber and in that sense avoid a vote but have the luxury of recording a vote or recording a position, if I can put it that way, and I think that that is a potential risk in the longer run.

I also just put on record our caution about any remote voting. We are actually clearly opposed to that. We think that there are actually constitutional issues with it and there would be real verification issues. We cannot be sure that people are not under some pressure in distant places. We cannot be sure about the details of their exact circumstance, and I think that that is a significant problem for these points. So with those brief comments, we will not oppose those arrangements.

I do make one further point. I actually think that Parliament should return to proper sitting, and I make the point that we can sit alternate days or alternate weeks to the Assembly, even with one day overlap. Perhaps you might do that to enable—

Ms Symes interjected.

Mr DAVIS: No, I just think that in terms of the circulation of bugs and so forth, we are quite conscious—

Ms Symes interjected.

Mr DAVIS: I make the point. That is our preference: a proper sitting of the Parliament.

 Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (13:51): I would like to rise to speak to the substantive motion but also Dr Ratnam’s amendment, which I have to say was a bit of a team effort. I almost feel still out of breath from some of the running around that has occurred over the last 24 hours in finding a compromise position to enable in particular the crossbench to have their opinions recorded when they are not able to be in the chamber to do so, and we know that this is coming. We know that any number of us may find ourselves in a tier 2 spot or a tier 1 spot or, hopefully never, find ourselves COVID positive—or whatever reason. So I think this a good step in the right direction in doing that.

I do not share Mr Davis’s concerns about being stabbed with a knife just off camera on the TV screen or something. I think we have managed. Certainly we have seen in the last 12 months in our committee process that we have been able to deliberate on reports. We have been able to conduct ourselves voting even in an online fashion, which has been effective and which has not been questioned.

I thank the clerks, and I read with interest the President’s report because I thought that it went a long way into seeing online voting and seeing us being able to operate very effectively if we had to from remote locations. So I look forward to continuing to work in this. I do want to be able to see the crossbench being able to pair in the future, and I would like to see that in a formal arrangement, not just for us, because I think some of the concerns about the crossbench pairing were that you would not know what was happening. And so in some ways us codifying our processes actually enables the greatest transparency to see that, which in the traditional pairing that occurs between the major parties is obvious because of the remaining members in the chamber. For single-member parties like me and like Dr Ratnam and for Independents like Dr Cumming that is not as clear. With those words, I commend the amendment and support the substantive motion.

Amendment agreed to; amended motion agreed to.