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Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Khan wants Roberts before Privileges Committee

by

Gail Alexander
1569 days ago
20210302
UNC Senator Anil Roberts during debate.

UNC Senator Anil Roberts during debate.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

UNC Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts com­mit­ted a most egre­gious con­tempt of the Sen­ate with his re­cent ut­ter­ances on his so­cial me­dia broad­cast.

That was the pro­nounce­ment yes­ter­day from Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Franklin Khan, who called for Roberts to be brought be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges team. That mat­ter was be­ing de­lib­er­at­ed up­on yes­ter­day.

The mat­ter con­cerned cer­tain pub­lic state­ments by Roberts, fol­low­ing last Tues­day’s rul­ing by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo that Roberts leave that sit­ting.

Khan added, “The spe­cif­ic state­ments at­trib­uted to Sen­a­tor Roberts were de­liv­ered in two episodes of his show ‘Douglar Pol­i­tics’, broad­cast on Feb­ru­ary 23 and Feb­ru­ary 26.”

He not­ed the show was car­ried on var­i­ous so­cial me­dia .

Khan said Roberts used satir­i­cal sub­text to al­lege that in the dis­charge of her du­ties, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo was bi­ased to­wards him. It was not­ed Roberts re­ferred to him­self as “boom­ing voice” and the Sen­ate, as a “Kan­ga­roo Court”.

“While this may ap­pear to some as harm­less com­e­dy, it is not. It is in fact a dan­ger­ous pat­tern of con­duct on the part of this Mem­ber that threat­ens this in­sti­tu­tion of democ­ra­cy. This es­teemed Sen­ate func­tions on the ba­sis of well-es­tab­lished rules, pro­ce­dure and prece­dent, and if any­one of us wish­es, there are re­spectable and dig­ni­fied ways to chal­lenge the rules of this Sen­ate and the de­ci­sion of the Chair of this House,” he added.

“ In his dis­turb­ing and out­ra­geous re­flec­tion on the Sen­ate, Sen­a­tor Roberts has there­fore brought the Sen­ate as a whole in­to pub­lic ridicule.”

Khan not­ed Robert’s ut­ter­ances are al­so in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion of a pre­vi­ous rul­ing to mem­bers and Roberts in par­tic­u­lar on a sim­i­lar mat­ter .

He said Roberts, as a for­mer par­lia­men­tar­i­an, knows bet­ter.


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