Opinion: Could MP Billy Gordon be expelled from Parliament?

INDEPENDENT MP Billy Gordon’s rap sheet over 21 months as an MP must surely be close to inviting the same kind of conclusion as was met by Scott Driscoll, who quit before he was kicked out of Parliament.

Billy Gordon has been kicked out of the Labor Party, fined for driving drunk and unlicensed and he’s sent unsolicited pictures of his penis to several women.

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ON NOVEMBER 19, 2013, Queensland Parliament’s powerful Ethics Committee flexed its muscles like never before in the 153-year history of the Legislative Assembly.

It ruled that, as a jurisdiction linked with the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, State Parliament shared the same privileges, including the power to expel a member.

And it recommended just that in the case against then Redcliffe MP Scott Driscoll. It found the cumulative effect of Driscoll’s failure to disclose his interests and repeated charges of deliberately misleading Parliament warranted such an extraordinary penalty. He quit the next day citing ill health.

The sad and salacious pantomime which has become the political career of Billy Gordon may lead the Ethics Committee of the 55th Queensland Parliament to revisit this rule and recommendation.

Expulsion, the former Ethics Committee warned, should not be exercised “irresponsibly or capriciously”.

But it found the sum total of Driscoll’s wrongdoing warranted such action.

Gordon’s rap sheet over 21-months as an MP must surely be close to inviting the same kind of conclusion.

He’s been kicked out of the Labor Party over an undisclosed criminal record. He’s been fined for driving drunk and unlicensed. He’s sent unsolicited pictures of his penis to several women.

And now he’s facing allegations by a former partner that he misled Parliament by claiming he’d moved to rectify his tax affairs and made outstanding child support payments.

Gordon says the allegations are false and he’s paid $97,000 off his child support debt since become an MP. But this has only raised questions about whether these debts should’ve been disclosed on Parliament’s interest register to begin with. Speaker Peter Wellington is considering whether to refer the matter to the Ethics Committee. But the stakes are much higher than they were in 2013. Back then, Driscoll was already an LNP outcast and the Newman government ruled with a huge majority.

Gordon, by contrast, is part of the glue of a minority administration. A decision by Parliament to expel him would in all likelihood trigger a general election.

At this stage, it’s just an allegation and Gordon hasn’t been found to have breached any of State Parliament’s rules.

But if that occurs then the MP’s past indiscretions may come into play.

As the former Ethics Committee advised, the power to expel a member extends to protecting the “honour and dignity” of the House.

If Parliament decides drink-driving and sending dick pics doesn’t offend its honour and dignity now, then it’s unlikely it ever will.

Steven Wardill is The Courier-Mail’s state political editor