Today in Parliament, Abigail contributed to a debate supporting a Bill to ensure the government of the day is held to account in light of the Premier's office recently refusing to attend a parliamentary inquiry hearing.
Abigail said:
I speak on behalf of The Greens in support of the Parliamentary Evidence Amendment (Attendance of Witnesses) Bill 2026. I thank the Hon. Damien Tudehope for bringing it to the House. The Government needs to get some new content. I do not know how many times I have heard members recalling, "When we were in government and someone else who was notionally on the side of politics did this thing" et cetera. That comment is raised in relation to everything that happens. The Government has now been in government for three years. It needs to start taking responsibility for its actions. As my mum would say, "Two wrongs do not make a right." What we have to do is look at what is before us, stop throwing blame at others and just deal with the issues we have in front of us.
The other thing that this Government loves to do is to catastrophise and imagine the worst possible scenario as being the reason to not do something that is really quite sensible. In this case, it is the idea that we could have this rogue President or rogue Speaker who does something as though that person is not in a position completely by will of the House. If a President did something the majority of the House did not want, that President would not remain President for much longer. It is a silly argument. This is a straightforward bill, directly in response to the decision of the Court of Appeal in Cullen v the President of the Legislative Council of New South Wales last year. It is a shame that the first order of business was not the Government bringing its solution to what had occurred.
The Hon. Penny Sharpe: Because you guys demanded that we go to the High Court.
Ms ABIGAIL BOYD: I acknowledge the interjection. Some of us take our position in the Legislative Council seriously, and we will do everything within the powers of the House, not just for our own benefit but for the benefit of the House for generations to come, to...
If someone does not take up an appeal option within the time that they have it, then it is gone forever. So it was a responsible and prudent thing for this House to do, and we will continue to put the democratic institutions of our State above our own particular brand of politics. The judgement of the Court of Appeal is grounded in the Kable principle, which seeks to preserve the court's impartiality and independence from interference. The Court of Appeal's stated opinion was that the Parliamentary Evidence Act, in its current form, intrudes on the court's essential attributes of impartiality and independence by granting the President of the Legislative Council the power to direct that a warrant be issued. The prompt response by this Parliament to address the concerns expressed by the Court of Appeal, to preserve the Kable principle while preserving the vital democratic oversight and scrutiny powers of this Parliament, is responsible and prudent legislating.
This bill seeks to restore the longstanding powers that were conventionally understood to be available to the Houses and were relied upon on a multi-partisan basis by members for decades. It should be noted that these powers were not tested by a member of the public, by a former Minister or even by an aggressively lawyered up corporation, even though we have had plenty of those recently, but rather they were aggressively challenged by members of the Premier's own staff, in order to prevent scrutiny of the Premier and the Executive. These powers are essential if we are to effectively execute our vital function of scrutiny and oversight. We need these powers now more than ever. Just yesterday Australia slid even further down Transparency International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index, falling out of the top 10. Transparency International Australia CEO Clancy Moore said that the score reflects the ongoing corruption risks of big money in politics and the weaknesses in holding public officials to account for abuses of power.
This is not the first time this Chamber has considered the provisions of the Parliamentary Evidence Act. These powers have been repeatedly tested by this Government, which has become increasingly allergic to transparency. We had a transport Minister refusing to appear before a parliamentary inquiry, which sparked a similar bill. How long for this world are budget estimates hearings or bills inquiries or inquiries into any other matter about which a member of this Chamber wants to ask hard questions of members of the Executive in the other place? The Government should support this bill, which makes no change to what was the understood status quo. It was the status quo under which it came to power and until late last year.
If the Government refuses to support this legislation, it will be guilty of the most politically corrosive sin of rank hypocrisy, opportunism and cynical anti-democratic politics. Does this Government wish to be the Government responsible for weakening the powers of the country's oldest Parliament? The principles of a liberal democracy are based upon that of democratic oversight and accountability. All this bill does is take that modest step of reinforcing the status quo under which we have all been operating. We support the bill.
Read the debate in Hansard here.
11 February 2026