Manual of the Practice, Procedure and Usage of the South Australian House of Assembly is the definitive work on procedure in the Parliament of South Australia’s House of Assembly. This hefty tome, edited by Rick Crump with assistance from David Pegram and Joshua Forkert, is an important update to the previous edition.

At the launch in early June, editor Rick Crump spoke to the importance of the Manual. We are pleased to be able to share his speech in full below.

It is with pride, some trepidation and relief that I welcome you to the launch of a body of work that has been 140 years in the making.

It was 140 years ago, back in 1885, when the first edition of the Manual of the Practice, Procedure and Usage was first published, providing a detailed explanation of the rules and practices of the South Australian House of Assembly. A second edition was published five years later that documented updates to procedure between 1885 and 1890. Today, we’re here to mark the publication of the long awaited third edition, capturing the intervening 135 years of practice and precedence.

Before I talk about this new edition, it’s worth taking a moment to note the original manual, affectionately known by my predecessor Clerks as ‘Blackmore’ after its author, Edwin Gordon Blackmore, the then Serjeant-at-Arms and Clerk Assistant of the House of Assembly.

The impetus for the compilation of the original manual came from Sir John Cox Bray, our first South Australian-born Premier and Speaker, who as Chief Secretary in 1885 ‘pointed out that the practice and procedure of our own House must more and more be our own work, prescribed and limited by our own precedents and circumstances’. At Bray’s suggestion, Blackmore undertook the task of compiling the manual from the records of the House from 1857 to 1885.

Blackmore himself was an important figure in the history of both the South Australian and Commonwealth Parliaments. He arrived in South Australia in 1864 from Bath via New Zealand where he was awarded the New Zealand Medal for service in the New Zealand Wars. Following his brother James, he joined the South Australian parliamentary service in October 1864, serving as sessional clerk for the House of Assembly, then in the Parliamentary Library from 1865 and then Clerk Assistant and Serjeant-at-Arms from 1869. Blackmore served briefly as the Clerk of the House of Assembly from 5 May 1886, before being appointed Clerk of the Legislative Council on 18 May 1887.  Blackmore would go on to serve as Clerk to the Australian Federal Conventions in 1897-98 and was the first Clerk of the Commonwealth Senate from 1901 to 1908.

By the time the first edition of his Manual was published in 1885, Blackmore was already widely regarded in the colony as an authority on parliamentary practice, having published collections of rulings by Speakers of the House of Commons. 

Blackmore followed up his 1885 Manual with an equivalent for the Legislative Council in 1889  and a treatise on the Law and Constitution of South Australia in 1894.  He was also instrumental in drafting the Standing Orders for the Western Australian Parliament, and later the first draft of Standing Orders for the two Houses of the Commonwealth Parliament.

Blackmore’s original Manual was the first of its kind among the Australian colonial Parliaments and was well received in South Australia. The then Speaker, Sir Robert Dalrymple Ross, told the House:

I have looked very carefully through the whole volume, and I must say it redounds greatly to the credit of the author, not only on account of the perseverance and energy which he has displayed, but also for the evident ability with which his task has been carried out. 

Interestingly, Blackmore’s works were not so well regarded outside of the colony. The Victorian Clerk of the Parliaments and first clerk of the Commonwealth House of Representatives, G H Jenkins, noted privately that Blackmore’s position in South Australia carried ‘the same importance as a parish council, no more than the Board of Works’ and disparagingly suggested Blackmore ‘wrote a few useless compilations of Imperial Speaker’s decisions for the sake of notoriety.’

Those comments would suggest that the South Australian–Victorian rivalry was as strong then as it is today.

This the third volume picks up where Blackmore left off to record the practices and precedents of the House of Assembly in the intervening 135 years since the last edition. Where relevant, it draws from Blackmore’s original text. In all other regards, it is an entirely new text for a new age to better assist current and future Members of the House.

Many of the Standing Orders in force in 1885 remain relatively unchanged today and Blackmore’s Manual continues to serve as an important source of procedural advice for Members and Clerks and is referenced regularly in rulings by Speakers.

However, while the basic principles of parliamentary procedure endure, much has changed since Blackmore’s day. In Blackmore’s original Manual, there was no mention of political parties, the Executive, Cabinet or Opposition, reflecting the nineteenth-century ideal that ‘all elected parliamentarians were equal’.  Since then, South Australia itself has grown from a British colony of around 300,000 in 1885, to a State in the federated Commonwealth of Australia of over 1.7 million. The 52 Members of the House in 1885 served electorates between 1500 and 3500 electors, and today 47 Members serve electorates of around 25,000 electors. The increasing complexity of governing a modern State, together with the development of the party system and increase in Executive influence, has changed the way the House operates and has resulted in major reforms to the Standing Orders. 

This Manual describes the current procedures of the House and provides examples of precedents and rulings by Speakers, many of who join us today. While precedents are drawn from the long history of the House, greater emphasis is given to precedents from 1975 onwards, following major reforms to the Standing Orders made during the Dunstan Government that modernised the procedures of the House. It also charts the evolution of the Standing Orders, to explain how, why and when Standing Orders have been changed, and in so doing, describes the historical evolution of the House and the State it serves.

In preparing this volume, we are greatly indebted to the work of the former Clerks of the House in compiling and maintaining the precedents of the House, notably Blackmore himself, Gordon Desmond Combe (who I learnt as a result of the research undertaken lived in the same street three houses away from where I currently reside in Colonel Light Gardens), and my predecessor Malcolm Lehman (Clerk 2007–2014) who join us here today.  

A work of this magnitude could only be accomplished through the efforts of a committed team. To those staff members of the House of Assembly who have made contributions to the third edition and commented on the draft, I thank them for their valued efforts.

I would like to thank Michael Bollen, publisher and director at Wakefield Press and his professional staff who have greatly assisted in getting this body of work published.

I would also like to acknowledge the work of the Assistant Editors David Pegram, Deputy Clerk and Dr Josh Forkert, Clerk Assistant Procedure, who have been thorough and patient in drawing together the copious quantities of material that has arisen since the publication of the second edition.

It would be remiss of me if I did not make special mention of the work undertaken by Dr Forkert, who has meticulously examined the Votes and Proceedings, Hansard and numerous versions of standing orders that span the time since the last editions. Dr Forkert’s steadfast approach to the task at hand, exemplary research and writing skills and scholarly analysis were an extraordinary contribution that made this edition a reality.

We offer this volume to the House, its Members, and all those interested in the operation of Parliament in South Australia.

We trust that anyone reading the third edition will benefit from the experience and gain a better understanding of how the Assembly operates.

Hopefully we can meet again in the not too distant future to launch the fourth edition.