Senator Andrew Bartlett
Saturday, October 15, 2005
 
terror-fying
The week in the Senate ended badly, with the government trying late on Thursday afternoon to sneak through a truncated, one week Senate Inquiry into their 'anti-terrorism' legislation. A day earlier they were successful in restricting a Senate inquiry into the workplace relations laws to just a few weeks, even though it is overturning key aspects of a system that's been in place for a century. There was very little media concern expressed about the ridiculously short workplace inquiry, although there seems to be some recognition that their plan with the 'anti-terror' laws is absurd. Even if you support the general thrust of their proposals, to push such major changes through without proper public scrutiny to make sure the laws work as they are intended is just plain crazy.

It is good to see the ACT Chief Minister put the draft 'anti-terror' laws up on a website so the public can view them for themselves. The fact that the federal government is upset at this just confirms to me how keen they are to push the laws through without people being able to calmly examine what the contents and consequences are.

On Friday I was in Sydney chairing a Senate Committee inquiry into salinity. As this is not such a politically charged issue, I hope we can get some constructive, cooperative recommendations out of it.

I am flying out today on a two week parliamentary delegation. This may mean I will only be able to make intermittent postings, depending on how readily I can get online. However, I will be spending many hours on airplanes, so I might get plenty of time to write things (or to sleep). It is a six member delegation to Turkey and Ireland. I haven't been on a full length delegation before in the 8 years I've been in the Senate. I've been a bit sceptical about how much value for money some of them are, but I know from the individual overseas travel that I've done, as well as the brief trip to Jakarta and Aceh I did earlier in the year, that it can also be very useful. I'll give my verdict on the overall value of this one at the end.

We will be going to Gallipoli while we are in Turkey, which I am looking forward to. By coincidence, I was part of a Senate Committee that has just tabled a report into the saga surrounding damage caused by roadworks at Gallipoli earlier this year. It was a rather politicised inquiry, although it was pretty obvious the Australian government was economical with the truth in their comments about what was happening there.

The thing that amazed me most out of the whole inquiry wasn't the dishonesty of the Australian Government (hardly a surprise on anything these days). It was the fact that, despite this area having such national and historical significance to both Australia and Turkey, there didn’t seem to be a comprehensive heritage assessment of the whole site, and particularly not of the marine areas. According to evidence given to the inquiry, the first marine archaeological survey is only being conducted now (see para 4.24 of the report). Given how much Australia's political leaders like to wrap themselves in the flag for Gallipoli commemorations, I find it hard to comprehend that this sort of information hasn’t been compiled long ago and doesn’t seem to be widely available. It's a bit hard to complain about damaging the heritage of something if you don't fully know what it is. Having said that, I noted an article in the Sydney Morning Herald which states that a detailed study already exists, as part of work that was done in the 1990s attempting to establish a Gallipoli Peninsula Peace Park. For various reasons, this work didn’t bear fruit. Anyway, I may write more on that after I've visited the site myself and got more detail of the Turkish perspective.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, October 15, 2005 Permalink
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