Senator Andrew Bartlett
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
 
The Senate is still here - apparently
The Senate is sitting again this week, despite John Howard's decision to cancel the sitting of the House of Representatives. When the Senate is the only house of parliament sitting, it usually means the press gallery pays a tiny bit of extra attention to happenings in the Senate, as they don't have the vaudeville show in the other place to look at. However, given the level of media interest in the general proceedings of Parliament is fairly minimal anyway, doubling the amount of attention paid still adds up to not very much.

Not surprisingly, the Government continues to encourage this habit of assuming the Parliament doesn't matter by using any other mechanism they can to announce anything they think is important.

Even though Eric Abetz, the Minister responsible for the electoral system, is in the Senate, he still chose to use a speech in Sydney rather than the Senate to put forward a range of proposals to further weaken our democratic system. Clearly the Minister believes we shouldn't make it too easy for people to be able to vote, or let them do it too often, and he's also happier to tell the electorate this through the media than the Parliament – which suits the media fine I guess because they get first grab at it.

In another example, Government plans to fundamentally overhaul the nature of Aboriginal land rights have been floated by selective leaks to what now seems to be the government's preferred means of communication, The Australian newspaper. Once again the relevant Minister, Amanda Vanstone, is in the Senate. Still, this report in The Australian pre-empts the 'official' announcement, so it's just possible that the Minster will actually show the Parliament the courtesy of announcing these changes to the Senate. Perhaps the Australian is just speculating – although their report seems strangely certain about what the content of the Government's policy will be.

Even better would be the Minister for Indigenous Affairs actually consulting properly with indigenous people before announcing such a radical shift in an area of such profound significance to them. Call me cynical, but I'd say the chances of that are even less than Eric Abetz announcing he favours reducing the amount of money people are allowed to anonymously donate to the Liberal Party.

The Senate is only sitting for three days this week, and the Government decided to have almost all of today's proceedings, including Question Time, cancelled and devoted predominantly to a condolence motion on the weekend bombings in Bali.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, October 04, 2005 Permalink
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