Senator Andrew Bartlett
Monday, September 26, 2005
 
Sunday shows
Once upon a time I used to be religious on Sundays – I'd religiously watch all of the Sunday morning current affairs shows on television, trying to catch the political interviews to find out what the issues of the day might be and what sorts of comments I could make. These days, I don't watch much TV at all, regardless of the day of the week.

So I felt especially virtuous last Sunday, not only forgoing sleeping in, but steeling myself to watch all of the political interviews on the Sunday morning shows, (although I must admit my main motivation was to see the brief interview on The Insiders with the guy responsible for the often-interesting blog, The Daily Flute.)

Watching these shows made me feel young again. I spent most of the time yelling at the TV set, with words like "rubbish", "garbage", "pish tosh" and "fiddle faddle" cascading from my lips, (they’d be crasser four letter words if I was a chap of less couth an upbringing) (my mum reads this blog).

This brought back memories of when I was in my 20s. As a powerless student witnessing grotesque unfairness, inaccuracy, absurdity and injustice being blithely portrayed on the television, I used to vent my frustration at being powerless to do anything about it by yelling at the TV.

It made me feel like I'd come a long way, now that I'm in my 40s and a hugely powerful Senator, to be faced with grotesque unfairness, inaccuracy, absurdity and injustice being blithely portrayed on the television, and being able to vent my frustration at being powerless to do anything about it by yelling at the TV.

I thought I would pick out 3 things amongst the 472 643 that got under my skin:
(1) The so-called "war on terror" has to be one of the biggest con jobs ever perpetrated on the Australian public. Sure there's a few foreign extremists doing a good impersonation of an Australian yobbo with masculinity problems (and a not totally irrelevant gun slung over their shoulder), but let's keep things in perspective. Conspiring to kill people has always been illegal, whether you’re a modern mindless 'terrorist', or a good old fashioned axe-murdering maniac. I can't see why there needs to be a whole bunch of new wide-ranging powers given to politicians and police to 'protect us' against old style crimes like bombing and shooting, just because someone is wanting to bomb or shoot people for ‘terrorist’ reasons.

(2) There is a lot of talk lately of ethanol and biofuels. Whilst I know there are some factors which suggest that ethanol is not necessarily the economic and environmental magic bullet that some people might suggest, it still peeves me that the Democrats got a big ethanol boosting package out of the Government in 1991, and now the Nationals are expecting some kudos for getting policy somewhere close to where it was 15 years ago, before both the major parties let it die.

(3) I think Malcolm Farr is a reasonably OK assessor of Parliamentary activity, given that he is the chief reporter for the Daily Telegraph. However, he suggested on Sunday that the Prime Minister's decision to postpone a week's sitting of the House of Representatives was due to the delay in the drafting of the industrial relations legislation AND the need to hold up the VSU legislation which will cut services for students on university campuses. In fact, the VSU legislation was introduced into the Senate months ago. The Senate is still sitting as per its original schedule, and there is no reason for delay on the VSU legislation, other than the fact that thankfully some Coalition members are still unwilling to vote for it in its current form.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, September 26, 2005 Permalink
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