Put it down to another case of the Perpetual Present to which some members of the Press Gallery are so prone: otherwise intelligent Gallery journalists running the Opposition’s talking point that the Government is avoiding parliamentary scrutiny by releasing its carbon pricing package on Sunday.
The Howard Government announced the details of its GST package in August 1998, with no Parliamentary scrutiny whatsoever. It announced its Workchoices package on 9 October 2005, after it had given a special lock-up briefing to employers, at a Prime Ministerial press conference. No statement in Parliament – the House of Representatives wasn’t even sitting that week. It announced its media ownership reform package — the biggest shakeup in media regulation in decades — in the middle of the winter recess in 1996.
Under the Howard Government, the concept of Parliamentary scrutiny was trashed, particularly in its final term when it controlled the Senate. That was the era of two-day rubber-stamp Senate inquiries.
In all the above cases, of course, there was a subsequent debate — as there should have been — over the actual legislation implementing the package. In the media circus that so much of contemporary politics has become, it appears to have been forgotten that Parliament isn’t merely about Question Time, or Censure Time as it should now more correctly be known, but about scrutinising and debating bills themselves. Of course, even there the Howard Government couldn’t help itself — not even bothering to print off enough copies of the Workchoices legislation to enable MPs to read it, and springing legislation for the NT intervention so suddenly on both its own and Opposition MPs that they barely had 24 hours to consider it before the Government demanded passage.
And then, of course, there’s another point that neither the Opposition nor the Press Gallery has mentioned: the carbon pricing package is the result of the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change. If the Coalition was so eager to scrutinise the package, they could have joined the Committee at the outset and actually participated in its development.
Perhaps journalists have forgotten that too.
Give ’em a break- who owns most of the “Gallery of Pink Galahs” – and this time it is different – this time “it’s Labor, and this time those sort of standards are really truly important and worth farting for”!
“otherwise intelligent”?
[And then, of course, there’s another point that neither the Opposition nor the Press Gallery has mentioned: the carbon pricing package is the result of the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change. If the Coalition was so eager to scrutinise the package, they could have joined the Committee at the outset and actually participated in its development.
Perhaps journalists have forgotten that too.]
Aye and there’s the rub…perhaps if the MSM had been doing their job and scrutinised Abbott at those so called media stops where he fobbed off 3 questions and ran for cover when the going got tough. But the media just stood there like spare parts and then, as Abbott merely repeated his negative No No No line, ran the usual anti Govt theme from the No No No man. News Ltd of course are the main culprits, but then an organisation owned by a man whose interests in Britain, hack into a dead girls account plus 100’s and 100’s of Lord knows how many others, yet still refuses to acknowledge any serious wrong doing, can’t be expected to follow the norms of journalistic ethics and pride.
No we expect far too much of these scribblers of the media, actually seeking out news is far to tedious when handouts and cut and paste will do the job, in comfort.
This session the Labor Govt have passed over 150 bills in the Parliament, if we generously take out 100 of them as merely patching up current legislation, how much in depth reporting has been done on the remaining 50? I can remember 10 or 12 tops.
So sunday morning coming down will give them, major carbon pricing legislation to get their teeth into. I look forward to reading about and hearing what is in the bill and how that stacks up with the constant fear mongering the Leader of the Opposition and his cronies have been spouting around the country these last 6 months. The rise in petrol has been debunked, next cab off the rank is?
Clearly we have come to expect too much of journalists.
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Well said, Crikey! Where is press gallery expression of gob smacked amazement at Abbott’s derisively hypocritical complaint that the “The Prime Minister shouldn’t be allowed to get away with going around the country to carefully staged photo opportunities’ and instead should be fronting up to him in Parliament, facing the people there. What another week of his poos and posturing? Spare us! Hasn’t she been facing the people in the Parliament week in week out and time and again been cut off by his censure motions?