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.”
