Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
 
New Senators' First Speeches
The weather is very bleak in Canberra at the moment. The sort of cold with a real extra chill built in, and a drizzling rain on top of it. However, you don't really notice the weather when you're inside Parliament House. It's one of those places you tend to disappear into in the morning and re-appear out of in the evening without really noticing what's happening outside in the meantime. Indeed, I'm told it snowed around Parliament this afternoon (which is quite rare in Canberra central, even though it snows reasonably regularly on the nearby mountains), but I was inside the Senate Chamber at the time so I didn't see it.

Even though it is gloomy and chilly outside, there is a lot of new stuff happening inside – not least of which is 14 new Senators. Whilst party politics tend to reduce MPs to appear as little more than cogs in the party machine (see my previous post), they are quite different and distinct individuals. The First Speech of a new Senator is often seen as the best chance to get a decent glimpse into the real views and ideals behind the person who will soon just be voting the same way as all their party colleagues on every issue.

The problem with 14 new Senators is that it means a lot of First Speeches! We had two yesterday from amongst three new South Australian Labor Senators. In an interesting and praiseworthy development, all 5 Labor Senators from South Australia are women – as is the Democrat from that state.

Today there were three more, with sets of three lined up for tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday next week.

The first one today was by the 'new' Liberal Senator from Victoria, Michael Ronaldson, who has previously served in the House of Reps. He started out by saying that he was a "classical liberal, economically and politically" and then launched into a speech that to me had all the hallmarks of a firebrand neo-conservative.

He attacked our electoral system for generating a "situation whereby for 24 years the government of the day has been denied a majority" in the Senate. He then said "this anomaly has been used capriciously over the last nine years to stop key election policies endorsed by the people of Australia from being implemented." I presume he thought it was OK when the Liberals opposed measures in the Senate from the Labor Government in the years prior to that.

He also attacked the courts, getting stuck into judicial activism. At the end of a general spray against what he defined as postmodernism and cultural relativism, he said "there are not always two sides to every argument. There are some normative values which are both self-evident and necessary for Australia to continue as we know it. He specified "the rule of law" as a non-negotiable. I found that a bit ironic, given that the next item for debate was the Palmer Report which shows the consequences of letting the rule of law be undermined.

While there has been a slightly greater number of journos than usual sitting in the Senate gallery watching proceedings in the last couple of days there were only two present for this speech. However, there were a lot of Liberal MPs who came over from the House of Representatives - Sophie Panopoulos, Peter Costello, Teresa Gambaro, Fran Bailey, Chris Pyne and Phil Baressi to name a few.

About 6 more journos came into the gallery to watch the Family First Senator Steve Fielding's speech including Dennis Shanahan from The Australian, Gerard McManus from News Limited and Sophie Morris from the Financial Review.

I found myself agreeing with many aspects of his speech, although I find his portrayal of himself as "the public voice for Australian families" a bit aggravating, with its implication that no one else ever speaks for them. However, he expressed a concern that too often decision are made that put "families second and political ideologies first". I'd agree that ideology tends to come first – not just ahead of families, but individuals, the environment and the whole society in many cases, (the Government's insistence on prohibiting fees being charged for student services on university campuses being an obvious current example). His speech contained a consistent thread of attacking market fundamentalism, talking of us "being enslaved to the forces of the market," of "a world where few values matter except those of the market," that "Australians are not economic units," that "happiness comes through family not through money."

While I don't dispute the words, every time he mentioned the word "family" I was wondering what types of families he was thinking of, and which ones might be excluded. In talking about how market conditions had made working life less family friendly, he spoke of every parents desire to spend more time with their children. I can certainly empathise with that, but I'd have to say if he wants to spend more time with his children, he's really picked the wrong job.

Christine Milne, who has been a Green Party politician in Tasmania for many years, followed up with her speech, focusing strongly on criticising free trade and its impact on the environment, farmers and their communities. She also gave an interesting examination of the different ways the concept of 'values' is being framed in modern politics. She made what I think is a fairly hopeful statement that 'democracy is self-correcting'. It also repeated the mythology that environmental politics was generated from and is embodied only in the Green Party (a bit like Family First implying they are the only ones who speak for families). I guess this irritates me as someone who is in a party that has had the environment as a central tenet for 30 years, well before the Greens were formed, that this is always brushed aside as non-existent. However, I guess we all have our blind spots.

Tomorrow from 5pm we have new Senators Judith Adams (Lib, WA), Helen Polley (ALP, Tas) and Rachel Siewert (Gr, WA). The day starts with me attempting to disallow the Government's latest efforts to excise parts of Australia from the Migration Zone – we'll see how well Senator Ronaldson's 'classic liberal' 'non-negotiable' support for the rule of law stands up when the vote is called on this.

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