Notice given 11 March 2002

23  Senator McGauran: To move—That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) it is the 100th anniversary of the execution of Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant and Peter Handcock, killed by firing squad during the Boer War for following the orders, take no prisoners,

(ii) the court case held for Morant and Handcock was a sham, set up by Lord Kitchener, the giver of the orders Morant and Handcock followed,

(iii) the injustice to Breaker and Handcock has plagued Australia’s conscience since their execution on 27 February 1902,

(iv) in 1902 the then Federal Parliamentarian and later first Governor-General of Australia, Issac Issacs, raised the matter of the execution in Parliament stating that this issue was agitating the minds of the people of this country in an almost unprecedented degree, and questioned the validity of the decision,

(v) the reason we need to go back 100 years to now right this wrong, is because Breaker Morant is one of the fathers of our ANZAC tradition; a friend of Banjo Patterson and an inspiration for much of his poetry and described as a man of great courage who would never betray a mate; and a man of whom many of the young ANZACs in World War I had heard and on whom they modelled themselves, and

(vi) Lord Kitchener was the Commander-in-Chief of the British Military who made the decision to commit troops to Gallipoli and is responsible for that disastrous campaign;

(b) calls on the Government to petition directly the British Government for a review of the case, with the aim to quash the harsh sentence of death for Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant and Peter Handcock; and

(c) take action to include the names of these two Australians on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial.

30  Senator Brown: To move—That the Senate—

(a) notes that the Ministerial Code in the United Kingdom includes a system which deals with acceptance of appointments for ministers after leaving office; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) implement an advisory committee on business appointments, from which a minister would be required to seek advice before accepting business appointments within 5 years from the date from which he or she ceased to be a minister, and

(ii) ban any minister from taking an appointment that is directly related to his of her portfolio for 5 years from the date of resignation.