Senator Andrew Bartlett
Monday, February 07, 2005
 
The Senate Resumes
The Senate resumes this week for its first sittings in around 2 months.

In order to squeeze in one more night at home, I catch the early morning direct flight to Canberra. This means catching a 5.20am flight. Even though I thankfully live quite close to the airport, it still means getting out of bed around 4am, which is not my idea of fun. I stepped out my front door and left behind the smell of the hundreds of sun-baked and decaying mangoes currently carpeting my yard.

Most of the Qld MPs would have caught the previous night's flight down, but Kevin Rudd and Senator Ron Boswell share this flight with me. Unexpectedly, so does Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, with the video for their single Breathless appearing on the in-flight TV. I hadn't seen this clip before, which is not surprising as I've watched very little TV in the past few months. I am reminded of one of the iron laws of the universe which I'd forgotten about, which is that soon as I start enjoying something on the in-flight TV or sound system, the crew will interrupt with an announcement, so it was no surprise when Nick's song was interrupted mid-flow by some words from the pilot.

For once, some significant policy issues seem to be dominating the media's political coverage. The Cornelia Rau case is rightly getting lots of coverage (146 references through the Yahoo news link as at 9am) which should help lift the veil on how disgracefully people are being treated in our detention centres, the abortion debate is warming up and now looks like it will be around for a while, and the Liberals are laying the groundwork for some radical changes to industrial relations laws. It remains to be seen how ruthlessly the Liberals make use of their Senate majority from July, but I think the area where they are most likely to be extremist will be Industrial relations.

Even though the Senate doesn't sit until Tuesday, today the Democrat Senators will have a Senate Team meeting to plan for the week (and months) ahead. It will be the first time I've seen a couple of them since December, although I've had cause to communicate with almost all of them for various reasons since then. Natasha Stott Despoja won't be there as she is still on maternity leave following the birth of her son in December.

This also marks the time of my starting formally in the position of party Whip, although I have plenty of past experience in fulfilling the required tasks, so the position doesn't hold any great unknowns or challenges for me. Keeping across what is coming up in the Senate is a key part of the Whip's responsibilities, along with managing the presence of party members in the Chamber to respond on issues as required.

The Government's pending control of the Senate in July has taken a lot of the edge off our responsibilities (and opportunities) in examining all the legislation due for debate, but we will still use our meeting to go through the list of Bills and the issues covered in them. You would be hard pressed finding out much about what is being debated in the Senate through the mainstream media, but you can always find out what Bills are planned for debate in the coming week by going to this site. Of course this is just what is proposed for debate, and it rarely ends up happening in the order or timing that's proposed. Bills can be brought on by the Govt with little notice or dropped off the list, and it is always difficult to predict how long a debate will take or what else may come up in the Senate Chamber. To use a simple example, there is talk that the sittings tomorrow will start with a condolence debate on the tsunami. This would be a fine thing to do, but it is an example of what sort of thing can easily throw the draft legislation program out of whack.

At the start of each day, a semi-official guide is issued outlining the expected order of business. This may be why it is called the Order of Business, although it is colloquially known as the "Red" because the paper copy has a red stripe down the side. This and some other relevant information can be found by going to this site. The Senate Dept is trialling updating it through the day so that it remains as accurate an estimate as possible.

If you see the name of a Bill and want to find out more about it, you can go to this site which contains the Bills Digest which usually has a fairly impartial and reasonably understandable outline of what the Bill is about.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, February 07, 2005 Permalink
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