Senator Andrew Bartlett
Monday, October 10, 2005
 
Sausage Factory gears up
The Senate sits in Canberra again this week. We now have just four sitting weeks left before the end of the year. If statements made by various government Ministers are to be believed, it is planned that major changes to laws relating to workplace relations, aboriginal land rights, security/anti-terrorism powers and welfare payments will all be passed in that time. The fact that draft legislation has not appeared for any of these areas apparently is not seen as a problem.

This article by David Marr in last week’s SMH summarises the apparent government strategy to avoid scrutiny very well. I don’t mind the rough guide he suggests, where if it takes five months for a team of lawyers to draft legislation, the public and Senate Committees should get five months to properly examine it to identify what its effect will be.

In amongst all the manufactured drama, spin and rhetoric, it often seems to be forgotten that the Senate is not just a fancy oversized soapbox for people to posture and pointscore, it is the primary place for making the laws that affect every Australian (and many others). Even when there’s agreement with the stated policy aim of the Government, it is a still essential to properly look at the legislation to see how it is likely to work in reality.

Some of the current mess with family payments is due to the original legislation being pushed through amongst a huge pile of other Bills, with a lot of rhetoric about how fabulous and generous the payments were, but little recognition of how it would work in practice.

Stealing the public’s money to pay for television advertisements for the Liberal Party’s workplace relations policy might generate a big enough mountain of PR garbage to fool a few people into thinking it’s just a happy, smiley new law we should embrace with gladness and praise, but it is not an adequate substitute for proper scrutiny of the legislation.

Don’t forget we also still have to deal with the student unionism legislation that will reduce student services on university campuses too. This has been sitting on the Senate’s Notice Paper (a fancy term for Agenda) since June, but has not been brought on for debate because the government wants to make sure it will pass before it brings it on. However, it is now starting to cause a big problem, whatever the eventual outcome, because even though it is now October, universities and the various Student Associations cannot plan for next year, because they have no idea what the size and nature of their income to cover the multitude of student services is going to be.

Incompetent/uncaring management of process on top of ideological zealotry is a pretty bad combination to have running the Senate.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, October 10, 2005 Permalink
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