Mr ANDREN (10:30 AM) —I want to touch briefly on this matter. I have no interest in anything to do with the coalition-Carr political games that may or may not be being played at the moment in the context of a state election or, indeed, in the context of any current inquiry of this House. I am most concerned that this amendment to standing order 344 specifically excludes the right of an individual member of this place to contribute to the democratic processes of the committee program. The Procedure Committee of this parliament last September, as the member for Banks has clearly outlined, issued a discussion paper on the standing orders and proposed that a plain English version of standing order 344 be recommended and approved. That new proposed standing order 217 retains the tenor and, in fact, the essential importance of existing standing order 344, which, as it stands, says that any individual member of the committee can ask the chair that a particular witness be withdrawn. As a former practitioner in the media and one who takes a close interest in these things, I am well aware of the potential for defamatory remarks to be broadcast in the community—and I know the minister at the table, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, has a deep and abiding interest in matters of defamation. We run the risk of prejudging people in what is essentially often an inquiry by what, after all, is a lay committee—we are not lawyers. So there is a real danger here, if we excise the right of individual members to seek the withdrawal of the public, including the media, that we will run the risk of damaging the rights of individuals. It takes away the rights not only of individual members, especially Independents and opposition members, but of individuals appearing before such committees; before, as I say, lay members of this House who do not have, in many cases—notwithstanding the overload of lawyers we have in this place—the skill or the capability to avoid the unfair and prejudicial treatment of those appearing before the committee.

This is a process that politicises the committee process. Governments already hold the majority in the House committees and this further entrenches the power of the government of the day through the committee process. I have had grave doubts right through my time in this place about the committee processes and the way in which reports divide into clear political lines. But, heavens above, here we have a further entrenching of the power of the government of the day—the executive—to dictate how the so-called independent committees of this parliament work. I support the amendment of the member for Banks strongly. If the government is serious about the democratic process, it will support it too.