Coalition in walkout to protest Mark Dreyfus attack on Peter Dutton

Parliament has witnessed the first walkout in eight years after nearly all Coalition MPs left the House in protest against Mark Dreyfus not being asked to withdraw his attack on Peter Dutton.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in question time. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Parliament has witnessed the first walkout on a Speaker in eight years after nearly all Coalition MPs left the House of Representatives in protest against Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus not being asked to withdraw his attack on Peter Dutton over the neo-Nazi rally in Melbourne.

Mr Dreyfus on Tuesday launched a spray at the Opposition Leader for failing to condemn the rally, accusing him of allowing “bigotry and hatred to breed” by not doing so. “There is no place in Australian society for public displays of Nazi symbols or the Nazi salute … and what did we have from those opposite? In particular, their leader? Complete silence,” he said.

“We all know that bigotry and hatred breed in silence. What is so hard about this? Who is the Opposition Leader afraid of offending here?”

Mr Dutton was given the chance to respond by the Speaker following the attack and to provide a personal explanation to set the record straight at the end of question time. However, manager of opposition business Paul Fletcher on Wednesday requested Speaker Milton Dick retrospectively order Mr Dreyfus to withdraw his comments.

Mr Dick found Mr Dreyfus’ comments were critical but not “unparliamentary”, prompting all but 10 Coalition MPs to storm out of the chamber. The walkout is the first since 2015 when then-opposition leader Bill Shorten called on the then Coalition government, led by Tony Abbott, to reverse $500m in budget cuts during a speech regarding Closing the Gap.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Julian Leeser – who is Jewish – said Mr Dreyfus had done something “abominable” by attributing anti-Semitism to someone who was not anti-Semitic.

“That action was a mockery of the seriousness of anti-Semitism,” he said.

It followed Mr Dutton earlier on Wednesday moving to suspend normal parliamentary business to allow for the introduction of a private members bill banning swastikas, Nazi uniforms and Nazi salutes in the wake of neo-Nazis protesting in Melbourne on the weekend.

“We come together to send a very clear message that it is not Australian to adopt these symbols, to publicly display them, to glorify that period of history,” he said.

“Today is an opportunity for our parliament to show our country and, frankly, to show the world that we will take action, which is significant, and it will send a clear message to those that may otherwise be influenced by people of bad faith.”

Under the Coalition’s proposed legislation, anyone in breach of the new laws could face up to a year in jail.

The NSW and Victorian governments have already moved to ban the public display of the swastika, with Victoria on Monday indicating it would also ban the Nazi salute.

But the government refused to support the move to suspend parliamentary business to have the bill tabled, which it said it had not been given the chance to read first.

“No government ever … had a private member’s bill brought forward in a suspension of standing orders and immediately said ‘yep’, without going through cabinet, without going through any processes or without going through its party room,” leader of the house Tony Burke said.

“What the government won’t do is take a bill that has been handed to us now, without us being able to go through any of our own procedures.”

Mr Burke confirmed the Attorney-General’s Department was already looking into reforming the criminal code to ban such symbols, though no time frame on when this work would be completed was provided.