“Let there be no mistake. An efficient and hard working Senate, scrutinising, criticising and examining legislation and keeping the government accountable, is a great institutional safeguard for all Australians. When the Senate carries out this constitutional role no thinking Australia would be disposed to change it.

“But when the Senate crosses the line and acts as an obstructional competitor to the democratically elected government of the day, frustrating or substantially delaying urgently required responses to national problems or insisting on its own policy, it is no longer a House of review but a House of obstruction.”

Now, you have probably guessed already that those words weren’t uttered yesterday by one of the five — count ‘em — ministers who joined forces to denounce Tony Abbott’s “relentless negativity” and Senate obstructionism.  Nope, the speaker was Helen Coonan, back in 2003, in a speech entitled ‘The Australian Senate — From Gatekeeper To Gridlock’ (alliteration! great title, huh?).

At the time, John Howard had become so frustrated at Senate obstruction that he started talking about trying to “reform” it.  Luckily it wasn’t very long afterward that Mark Latham handed him the very best sort of Senate reform — a majority.

This Government is, to be fair, more sinned against than sinning. It is stuck having to deal with Steve Fielding, for one thing. Fielding’s problem is not so much that he’s a clown and a fool — many a successful political career has overcome those obstacles — but that he can’t be relied on from one moment to the next, and will even vote against things he has doggedly espoused based on some mysterious whim, making him the worst possible swing vote.

I remember when Nick Xenophon arrived in the Senate and he was regularly compared to Fielding with his liking for stunts and attention-grabbing. Well, Xenophon rapidly became a reliable and sensible negotiator, not above the odd stunt, to be sure — he held the second stimulus package to ransom so he could claim he’d got more water into the Murray-Darling — but a sensible and mature independent participant in the Senate process. He couldn’t be less like Fielding.

And Penny Wong can indeed point out that she negotiated a deal on the CPRS and got it approved by the Coalition before it was overturned by the right-wing putsch last year, although the Government came decidedly late to the idea that a bipartisan consensus on “the great moral and economic challenge of our generation” was worth pursuing.

But before Labor gets too carried away with the rhetoric about Opposition wrecking and obstructionism, let’s just do a quick reality check on its own record in the Senate.

In 1996, the Coalition went to the election with a crystal-clear commitment to the sale of part of Telstra. But after the election Labor decided to oppose the sale anyway, dealing in Labor rat Mal Colston and erstwhile Labor rat/Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine, who extorted hundreds of millions of dollars — back when hundreds of millions meant something — in pork barrelling for their states in exchange for their support.

Fast forward three years, and the Howard Government, having campaigned the year before on a commitment to a GST, is again opposed by Labor in the Senate despite a blindingly clear mandate for tax reform. Labor’s opposition in the Senate deals in Australia’s school ma’am Meg Lees, who inflicts her own batty ideas of tax equity on the process, with significant cost to the efficiency of the GST. On the upside, she kills her own career as well, but the damage is done. Thanks again to Labor.

And by the time we get to Helen Coonan going to a Davos forum on Hayman Island to rail against Senate obstructionism in 2003, Labor is blocking substantial reforms to increase the co-payment for PBS medicines, a part of the Government’s efforts to rein in health spending in the wake of the first Intergenerational Report. For two years the Government’s PBS reforms are stalled, at substantial cost to the Budget, until Mark Latham belatedly realises he needs to find some savings for his health policy in the lead-up to the election, and decides they should be allowed through the Senate.

So let’s not get too sanctimonious about obstructionism and fiscal vandalism.