“The last Senate election was widely criticised. Australians were astonished to see people elected to the Senate whose primary votes were a fraction in the case of one senator from Victoria, about half of 1% of the vote … I think Australians were shocked by some of the results of the election.” Malcolm Turnbull, February 2016
“If your local vote is for Labor, Greens or an independent, and you are in one of the 20 or so key battleground seats across the country, it is a vote for the chaos of a hung parliament.” Malcolm Turnbull, June 2016
What an exciting time to be alive. You don’t dare turn away from political coverage in case another senator or MP is forced to quit, or quits their own party, or is sacked. Today, braveheart Jacqui Lambie says farewell. Lambie brought a decidedly earthy touch to the Senate, occasionally displaying quite despicable racism but also making good sense on other issues. Nor does she favour changing the constitutional section that has finished her political career for now; people in her position should just “suck it up”, she said this morning, a refreshingly blunt and correct assessment. Oh, and by the way, this morning the South Australian parliament signed off on Nick Xenophon’s replacement, Rex Patrick. One imagines he’ll be sworn in with his party colleagues beside him, unlike Fraser Anning yesterday.
Meanwhile, the weekend casualty, John Alexander, learnt this morning, along with the rest of us, that Labor is going hard for his seat, unveiling Kristina Keneally as its candidate (she lives in Trent Zimmerman’s seat of North Sydney, but argues she’s a local).
And yesterday the government caved in to Bill Shorten’s demands on the timing and detail of MPs’ and senators’ citizenship declarations. That’s despite Turnbull lamenting last week that Shorten had shown up to their meeting with nothing to offer, leaving the prime minister to fiddle with his iPad for two hours. Turnbull didn’t have a lot of choice — he needed some mechanism to deal with the crisis, and Shorten had outplayed him in appearing more committed to transparency.
In normal circumstances, quite remarkable events like the shouting match between George Brandis and Nick McKim in Senate question time yesterday over Manus Island would attract significant attention; at the moment, it passes with virtually no notice, even though the House of Representatives isn’t sitting. And none of this chaos looks like ending any time soon; the only hope for the government is that it can go to Christmas with New England and Bennelong still in its column and marriage equality legislated without imposing pro-discrimination laws, or a major split in Coalition ranks.
At what point does the 45th parliament become a write-off? Eight senators have gone because of citizenship and another three have departed. That’s around 15% of the entire Senate. Several have left the parties they were elected under — in the case of Fraser Anning, left it before even being sworn in, a seemingly fundamental breach of the basic pact between candidates and voters (in his case, all 19 of them). The prime minister has already seriously canvassed parliament spending the rest of the year only dealing with non-controversial legislation (admittedly, the bulk of legislation is non-contro). There’s the lingering problem of how valid the ministerial decisions of Joyce and Nash are. The government is unable to pursue its agenda or even talk about anything other than citizenship and marriage equality. Perhaps it’s time to click on Control-Z.
I think you mean Alt-Ctrl-Del. Needs a complete reboot. And I agree, the Parliament at the moment can’t be said to be a reasonable reflection of the people’s will as expressed at the ballot box last year.
A new election would be an appropriate resonse to the crisis – and if I was in charge I’d go for broke and hold two referendums at the same time – one on reforming section 44, the other on installing the Aboriginal “voice to Parliament”.
They tried that – the DD, remember? Sack the whole non-Malcolm-voting Senate and get a new one that would recognise his greatness. Dear Leader thought it would be a glorious vindication of his magnificence…
…and instead, it was… this…
Reverse Midas touch, when everything he touches turns to dust.
I can’t agree with reforming Section 44. it is quite explicit and enforceable as it is. It’s up to the politicians and their parties to tighten their candidates’ scrutineering in order to avoid such embarrassments in future. That said, I agree that our Aboriginals deserve a stronger say than they have at the moment. It can only be beneficial if they feel less “left out”.
Why change it?
If Labor can verify citizenship (as seems the case thus far) why can’t other parties; especially “The Born to Rule” ….. unless they’re illegitimate?
It’s telling that the two Greens senators and Nick Xenophon and Jacquie Lambie resigned right away, unprompted. While the One Nation, National and Liberal senators and MPs (except, it seems, for John Alexander) had to be dragged out kicking and screaming.
Their enormous sense of Entitlement was weighing them down.
I’ll buy that one!
It’s a shame Senator Lambie is going, she at least looked after the interest of veterans. Yes the representative process was & is terrible with too many micro-parties / lone wolf senators. Now fringe is the new normal & as a member of the silent majority I hated the situation
I won’t miss her mindless Islamophobia though.
My problem with Jacqui Lambie was that she could only empathise within the limited range of her own personal experiences. So low income people, centrelink recipients, single mums, parents of ice addicts, veterans she cared about. But she had no imagination to understand anything beyond her personal experience, thus no empathy for Muslims and some pretty awful racism.
True, Kelly, but you can turn that around and apply it to ANY politician and Lambie was the only one with any experience of low income people, Centrelink recipients, single mums etc.
None of the other politicians have any experience of anything outside their comfortable, middle-class or higher, high income bubble. They have no more experience of Muslims than Lambie did. Less, actually. Lambie’s hatred of Muslims comes from the ADF. It’s part and parcel of the culture. A very necessary part: you can’t exactly point soldiers at Iraq or Afghanistan and tell them to risk their lives killing nice people, can you? You have to tell them those Muslims are the enemy and the enemy is bad.
But the other professional politicians certainly know how to exploit Muslims to whip up fear and blame in the electorate. Not to mention a willingness to keep waging war on Muslim countries and locking up Muslim refugees.
If you want something to blame for Lambie’s Islamophobia, blame Australia. The state created it. The state profits by it. The state perpetuates it.
“You have to tell them those Muslims are the enemy and the enemy is bad.”
Except that pretty well all the people in those countries are Muslim, including the ones the army is supposed to be protecting. Even soldiers would need to be able to master more subtlety than that.
But isn’t that the case with all politicians? Kelly O’dwyer has ONLY banking experience, Tony Abbott has ONLY student politics’ experience, Bill Shorten has ONLY Union experience. I really miss Ricky Muir, because his life experience better equates to mine.
Passionate as she is, Lambie exemplified that adage about “a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing”.
We need more Reps and Senators who’ve had their hands dirty in Parliament – Jacqui and Doug Cameron should have more such colleagues. There are all too many lawyers & accountants in white collars and three piece suits there at the moment – and that’s across the board!
In this analogy, Ctrl+Z would only undo Jacqui Lambie’s resignation. Also, unless you’re using the on-screen keyboard, you don’t click on keys. GET IT RIGHT, BK.
I think the Senate voting should be reformed again before the next election.
No above the line voting.
Minimum 1-12 votes to be cast
Random order of candidates in a group/party.
Random order of groups/parties on the ballot.
You’ll never get the big parties to agree but it would certainly be more democratic, if much slower to count.
I like this idea.
As far as democracy is concerned, the entire voting system is rigged to support the major parties. A true independent standing for the senate would be crushed by the rules, re: naming conventions and a requirement for 500 signatures prior to being nominated for candidature.
Question arising: how many ratbag minority candidates are surreptitiously funded by the Major Parties merely to confuse the Rubes and turn the Senate Ballot papers into “tablecloths”?
I support the two previous comments – they make sense.
Yes! Great idea. Although I for one will continue to savour the delite of writing the Number 124 beside Pauline Hanson’s name.