Thursday, 31 August 2023

Rulings from the Chair

Badges

The PRESIDENT (09:33): Yesterday evening Ms Crozier raised a point of order concerning members wearing badges in the chamber relating to the upcoming referendum. I said I would get back to the house on this matter, and I appreciate members giving me that opportunity. As I indicated at the start of the term, that is something that I will take up. At the time, I felt like I got myself into the weeds about whether the referendum should be determined a political matter or not. I think that is a debate for this house, not for me to consider about previous rulings and standards that have been set.

There are a number of rulings made by a number of previous Presiding Officers around the wearing of badges, saying that they should not be worn if they have advertising or political ramifications, so I would say that the wearing of badges for the referendum falls into where we should not be wearing them. I think we can have an easy consensus and probably we would not have debate at all about whether we have badges that support the Cancer Council or Legacy, which has got a badge sale at the moment, or anything like that. Any area where we can have consensus, we should all be happy with. But I am determining that these particular badges are not appropriate in the chamber.

As I said, I got a bit bogged down about whether it is political issue or not, and we all have our own opinions about that. But I put a lot of weight on what Ms Crozier said – ‘Where does it end?’ – because, as I said at the time, people could wear their ‘no’ badges, but then someone comes in with a huge ‘yes’ badge and then someone comes in with a bigger ‘no’ badge. Where does it end? I put a lot of weight on that comment. That was a really longwinded ruling, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew where I was coming from.