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Geese, spivs and C-words: A decade of unparliamentary language in Queensland
By Matt Dennien
The C-word was having a moment. On at least three occasions in 2018, MPs were asked to withdraw comments featuring the phrase from Queensland parliament.
“I’m happy to drop the C-word in here,” then-LNP Whitsunday MP Jason Costigan declared proudly in the June of that year. Except it wasn’t the four-letter variant you might first think. It was “coal”.
The Queensland parliament is colourful at the best of times, dark and moody at the worst.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Still, his attempt at comedy was deemed unparliamentary by Deputy Speaker Joe Kelly – one of the 253 examples of such language (and worse) from Queensland MPs over the past decade.
Despite their powerful ability to say things from within those walls that could get mere mortals outside (including themselves) in trouble for defamation and beyond, there was – and is – still a certain decorum to be upheld.
This is done through parliamentary rules set – and often broken – by the MPs themselves, or enforced by whoever sits in the Speaker’s chair.
For example: referring to MPs by correct titles (“the member for insert electorate; “the minister”, “the premier” etc), directing comments via the Speaker, not undermining that umpire-like role, and avoiding unsavoury words or phrases.
After coming across this list from across the ditch, I looked for a Queensland comparison that didn’t exist. But The Table, an annual Commonwealth parliamentary journal that collates examples of phrases from across the globe, does.
So, I scoured the past decade’s worth of our MPs’ efforts to create my own list. From jellyfish to corrupt fleas, nerds and neanderthals, all 253 entries are reproduced below.
Someone who knows a bit about this topic is Dr Chris Salisbury, a political historian at the University of Queensland.
As Australian parliaments began digitising their vast archived transcripts a decade ago, Salisbury set out to explore the new resource and what it could reveal about MPs’ behaviour across Queensland, Western Australian and federally.
Salisbury found Queensland MPs were on-paper twice as badly behaved as their federal counterparts between 1997 and 2010 – forced to withdraw statements under parliament rules a total of 277 times by the Speaker of the day.
While their WA counterparts were twice as likely again to flout the rules enforced by their own Speakers, they also sat for 235 more days across that period. On a party or government-versus-opposition basis, Queensland was the most evenly split.
“This could mean that, despite popular opinion, Queensland’s politicians of whatever stripe are [comparatively speaking] not so badly behaved after all — or that, as the popular adage has it, they are all just as bad as each other,” he wrote.
“Despite the poor perception all this likely engenders in the outside observer, the final question this exercise poses is this: does the public really care? Or would most people in fact be disappointed ... if our parliaments were not home to the ‘colourful repartee’ which we seemingly value in so many of our public figures?”
Speaking to me last month, Salisbury said the Table entries seemed to echo his work from a decade ago, which also suggested a trend of increasing – not declining – unparliamentary utterings.
Salisbury said the “battlefield” nature of parliaments across the country was seen by some as part of the furniture. Most also had historical norms and rules they still clung to.
Some had reputations, such as the “bear pit” of NSW, which could almost act as encouragement for MPs to go above and beyond.
He says he gets the sense some Queensland MPs over time have even wanted to try to match that.
Ultimately, despite the regular good-intentioned talk about making things more civil in a place where debate of ideas and policies is the name of the game, Salisbury feels some of those words spoken in the first state parliament still ring true.
“When push comes to shove, verbally at least, people revert back more to type”.