Peter Slipper wants to wear Queen's Counsel Gown

It must be a terrible thing to have your photograph on the front page of a Sydney newspaper depicted as a rat and Liberal turncoat. But Peter Slipper doesn’t seem to mind, he’s making himself even more unpopular by announcing that he wants to bring pomp and ceremony back to Parliament. He wants to wear the plush gown and wig and be ceremoniously brought to Parliament in a full procession from his office into the chamber at the start of each session. We finished with all that old-fashioned nonsense in 1988 when MP’s moved into the new Parliament House.


He will never be allowed to forget what he did last year, abandoning his party to become Speaker in a hung parliament which gave the Labor government an extra vote that will keep them in government. Slipper says he left the Queensland Liberal National Party because he was being bullied. "I would not have accepted this position if my election to this office was going to guarantee the government's endurance in office," he said. "It made sense to take the job ... they bullied me out of the LNP." My guess is that if he thought he was bullied by the LNP, he aint seen nothin’ yet.






Mr Slipper is a hard man to figure out, he’s admitted to being the victim of bullying yet wants to bring pomp back into parliament, a measure that will surely draw even more contempt from his colleagues. The wig was last worn by Billy Snedden 30 years ago and was donated to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.


Ian Sinclair who was Speaker for 8 months in 1998 warned Mr Slipper about wearing the Queen’s Counsel gown and other accessories. “The Speaker should always “be of the people, not above the people” he said.


One MP said "Slippery is a traditionalist, he wants the respect of the parliament but the risk is he will end up looking like a clown.”