In Defence of Our Democracy

“The Australian Monarchist League has always upheld Australia’s constitutional system of governance under the Crown but now the New South Wales government seems intent on overthrowing the democracy that has been at the heart of our constitutional system since Federation.

On the NSW parliamentary website is posted a notice stating:

“Statement from the Parliament of NSW
The NSW Legislative Assembly will not meet as scheduled on 7, 8, 9, 14, 15 and 16 September. The NSW Legislative Council will next meet on Tuesday, 14 September.”

The notice is still current as of 15/9/21.

However, when members of the NSW Legislative Council convened at parliament on Tuesday the 14th of September, the government ensured that no minister would be in attendance thus forcing the president of the Council to cancel the sitting under Standing Order 34 which specifies that: ‘the House will not meet unless a minister is present in the House’. (https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lc/rules/Documents/Standing%20orders%20May%202004.pdf)

Accordingly, without a Minister being present, the House is unable to meet and without meeting members of the parliament are thus not able to consider a motion to suspend the Standing Order to enable them to meet. It is indeed a Machiavellian move and whilst it may accord with parliamentary procedures, it is against the very concept of parliamentary democracy.

The cancellation of this sitting means that parliament has not met since the lockdowns in NSW commenced in June leaving the government not being held to account to the parliament to which it must be answerable.

The actions of the government in ensuring that parliament does not meet is an affront to our democratic traditions and we call upon all those who uphold our Australian democracy to contact their local State member of the NSW Parliament to request them to demand that the government enables the parliament to sit and ministers to attend without further delay.

Our democracy is based on the free election of a parliament from which the government is selected. No government should therefore abuse the parliamentary rules for its own purposes or in any way act to prevent a parliament from meeting.

Any member of the NSW parliament who is a part of this type of filibuster should be held to account for their betrayal of our democracy at the next election.

Philip Benwell
National Chair

Australian Monarchist League
http://www.monarchist.org.au/”