Senator Andrew Bartlett
Saturday, September 17, 2005
 
Article on Margo Kingston's site
I found this week’s Senate sitting quite distressing. Whenever people prove a willingness to let political imperatives override all other factors, it fills me with apprehension as to what else they are prepared to do. It is also depressing to see our parliamentary system, which has the potential to work so well, being reduced to such a hollow sham. It was a genuine relief to get out of Canberra on Thursday night and into the wider outside world.

I give a brief indication in my previous post of just why the Liberal Government’s actions were so dodgy, which generated a higher than usual number of comments. I have written a much longer piece expanding on this, which is on Margo Kingston's new webdiary site. The full piece gives some historical comparisons, but it was the whole range of measures the Government took to stifle scrutiny and debate, rather than one single act, which makes their actions so worrisome and extreme.

The key measures they used, one after the other - and each one with the full support of Senator Barnaby Joyce - were as follows:
1 - forcing Senate debate on legislation to start immediately upon its introduction on a Thursday;
2 - forcing a Senate Committee hearing into the legislation to be held on the Friday, less than 24 hours after the legislation was made public, and before the time for public submissions had even closed;
3 - forcing the Committee to write and present its report to the Senate by the following Monday;
4 - guillotining debate on all 5 Bills on the Wednesday, less than 7 full days after they were made public;
5 - ensuring only three hours of the Senate debate could be spent in the phase where the Minister could be questioned about the legislation;
6 - ensuring a significant proportion of that three hours was unable to be used to properly question the Minister, by Government Senators making speeches and asking 'dorothy dixer' questions to the Minister.

There are two other incidents from the Telstra ‘debate’ which I forgot to mention which demonstrate the level of contempt for basic decency, let alone due process and honesty.

The first occurred when the votes had been taken to cut the main debate stage of the legislation to a matter of minutes. Having just voted to prevent a range of Senators from speaking on the Bills, the Government managed to get the (theoretically independent) Senate President to give the call for next speaker to Barnaby Joyce, even though the speakers list, which is arranged in advance by the party Whips, did not have him on the list at all. You can read that exchange here in the Senate Hansard.

The second is the issue of Family Impact Statements. For those who don’t recall, before the last election, the Prime Minister promised the Family First party that Family Impact Statements would be produced for key pieces of legislation. Following various comments and questions about where the statement was for the Telstra Bills, it became clear that not only would the public not get to see such a statement, but not even the Family First Senator would! Any impact statement produced might be shown to Cabinet, but Cabinet documents are confidential. Needless to say, the Family First Senator is displeased about this. You can hardly blame then for assuming that, when the Prime Minister promised to prepare such statements, it would go without saying that they would also be made available for people to see. It’s an early lesson for them (and for the rest of us, another reminder) of how this Prime Minister operates to a different set of standards and honesty to the rest of us.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, September 17, 2005 Permalink
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