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Qld MPs have unusual history-making powers. Do they use them for good?
By Matt Dennien
In what circumstances can a bottle of red hair dye be made an important piece of Queensland political history? Probably very few.
But state MPs’ unusual powers to try and have anything from scathing reports to a now-mouldy “coconut gram” archived at taxpayers’ expense means they can, and do, try their luck.
A “coconut gram” and stunt “back of the envelope” Gabba redevelopment business case are among the more than 120,000 documents stored in the Queensland Parliament strong room.Credit:
Thanks to rulings by the umpire-like Speakers of parliament in the 1970s, any MP in Queensland has a largely unfettered right to “table” documents relevant to their speeches.
Other than Speakers, the Clerk (parliament’s top official), and ministers, MPs in federal parliament and at least NSW and Victoria can only do so if others vote to allow them.
Unsurprisingly, this can put a handbrake on such efforts – particularly for the opposition.
However, the Queensland case can also prove a headache for those then responsible for the documents. Not to mention raise questions about their actual historical value.
The MPs’ power is often used, perhaps also unsurprisingly, to score political points or as an excuse to justify having waved it around a prop (which is not allowed).
Back in March, LNP Deputy Opposition Leader Jarrod Bleijie tabled a joke “back of the envelope” business case from Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk for the $2.7 billion Gabba redevelopment.
Capalaba Labor MP Don Brown has this term tabled the printed Facebook page of a central Queensland Oktoberfest event which featured a photo of the LNP-aligned Redlands mayor who last year pleaded guilty to drink-driving after a budget-day crash.
Fresh-faced Callide LNP MP Bryson Head, after some privacy redactions, even tabled a constituent’s Bruce Highway birth certificate to make a point about regional maternity services. But not all documents make the cut.
Maiwar Greens MP Michael Berkman last year mercifully refrained from tabling a 2700-page petition calling on the government to remove shark nets and drum lines – citing the resources and space required.
Then-Warrego Nationals MP Howard Hobbs tried in 2003 to table a bottle of invasive army worms the Speaker of the time ultimately declared unsuitable and requiring “proper disposal”.
In October, Speaker Curtis Pitt reminded MPs about the privilege they had – not offered to those in many other jurisdictions – and the need to comply with parliament’s rules when using it.
“I therefore ask members to carefully consider the items they are tabling, and indeed whether the point the member wishes to make can be made without tabling the items,” he said.
Former Speaker and Labor MP John Mickel agreed Pitt was right to draw attention to that balance, which he said may have been tipped by the loss of many longstanding MPs in and since the Newman era landslides. “Smartarsery puts a lot of pressure on the parliament,” he said.
While sometimes questionable, parliament’s long-term Clerk, Neil Laurie, reiterated the other key point: tabled documents dating back to the first state parliament contain references to key historical moments.
“Not only [that] ... they are history in and of themselves,” he said. Documents such as the Royal Instruction from Queen Victoria on the separation of Queensland from NSW in 1860.
But history can be less grand, too: menus from restaurants in the multicultural seat of Stretton in Brisbane’s south, one of the 1990s Goss-era “coconut grams” sent to ministers by Sunshine Coast constituents (representing government “hardheadedness” over toll roads).
According to 2018 research, more than 120,000 documents – also including bills and the many government-produced or required reports – made up the tabled papers archive at the time.
All are kept protected in a climate-controlled “strong room” within Parliament House. The for-now smaller online database, currently at 147 GB, could fit on an inexpensive USB stick.
Digitisation started as an initiative of the parliamentary service in about 2007. Initial funding of $100,000 was granted to establish the resource and upload all papers from 1997 onward.
Since then, the goal has shifted to an eventual uploading of everything, at a cost which is “hard to determine” as an individual part of the day-to-day operation of parliament. “To date we have all papers since 1990 [online],” Laurie said.
Rising to her feet to during a session of question time in 2017, then-Labor Education Minister Kate Jones tried to table what she described as a “gift” to the LNP Opposition Leader of the day, Tim Nicholls, after railing against the spectre of One Nation ministers.
“So that his transformation is complete – here is a bottle of red hair dye,” Jones said. “Then he can go around and legitimately claim that he is the leader of the One Nation-LNP government in Queensland.”
The Speaker, independent Nicklin MP, Peter Wellington wasn’t laughing. The history books would have to go without.