MLCs voted to suspend the government’s leader in the Legislative Council, Penny Sharpe, and her deputy John Graham, to protest the Labor’s failure to produce certain papers for scrutiny.
Ms Sharpe was kicked out of the house on Tuesday for two weeks because the government would not release a statement Premier Chris Minns gave to police over a historical sexual assault allegation against a Labor official.
On Thursday, Mr Graham was suspended over the government’s failure to release a report by former judge John Sackar on hate speech legislation.
Liberal MLC Susan Carter said the term “cabinet document” was being used like “Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility”.
“We can throw it over everything and therefore the public, the parliament never get to see these documents,” Ms Carter told 702 ABC Sydney.
Centre for Public Integrity chair and former Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy KC said cabinet confidentiality was a “grey area”, but he doubted it applied to the report on hate speech laws.
His and Ms Sharpe’s removal means Labor now has the same number of votes as the Coalition in the upper house.
The government said 24 bills are backed up in the house of review.
Source: Two senior NSW ministers suspended from upper house over failure to release documents – ABC News