There’s more to accountability than the Senate, of course – as the
ANU’s excellent Democratic Audit of Australia website keeps reminding us.

It’s got a number of new papers and links up. First, it looks at
government advertising campaigns and political donations. Graeme Orr
and Joo-Cheong Tham
have recently written two articles on the benefits of political
incumbency – to the incumbents. In Public relations one; Industrial relations nil, Orr and Tham underline
the need for greater controls over government advertising, to control this “rort of incumbency.” In Big parties, big money,
they address the issue of corporate sponsorship of political parties, and call
for tighter disclosure regulation.

It then carried a paper from Labor Member for Canberra, Bob
McMullan, attacking “four benefits of incumbency that are threatening the
integrity of our democratic system… government advertising campaigns, increased
printing and postage allowances, political donation disclosure and tax
deductibility, and proposed changes to electoral enrolment regulations.” McMullan’s
speech is here – although, ever fair, the Democratic Audit observed: “It should also be noted
that the ALP had an opportunity in a recent Senate disallowance motion to
overturn the increase in the communications allowance for all MPs.
However, the ALP chose to side with the government in supporting
the increase.”

And while the Howard Dean fans at the new lobby
group GetUp! look like a who’s who of Liberal haters and Labor wannabes,
they’re entitled to lobby – which makes this email from a subscriber rather
amusing: “I generated one of those GetUp! email campaigns to all the
NSW Coalition Senators the other day and the only one which didn’t get through
was to Senator Helen Coonan, who just happens to be the minister responsible for…
IT. Now either she is generating a firewall against GetUp! from her office,
which is hardly democratic, or dare I say it, legal, or it is an almighty stuff
up. Either way not a good look.”