This week’s parliament was a short run affair. It started on Tuesday at midday, was all done by Thursday at 5pm. Hardly enough time to allow learned commentators to scratch their chins and ruminate about who won or lost.
Some might suggest parliament this week showed us parliament at its best. There was for example the speeches given by Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten on Closing the Gap, and the very heartfelt ones given announcing the awarding of the Victoria Cross to Corporal Cameron Stewart Baird.
Yes, such moments are touching, but for me they don’t see parliament at its best. I think parliament is at its best when it is doing what it is supposed to be doing – debating and examining legislation which will affect people’s lives.
Clearly, of course, such moments don’t involve Question Time. It’s easy to think the Question Time we have now is some woeful abrogation of the great tradition of Australian parliaments. But if we’re honest, Question Times back in the 1980s and 1990s when Keating was holding sway were not that much better or worse. It’s just that our memory of them is mostly limited to highlights we can view on YouTube.
There aren’t many highlights to be found these days, but that’s to be expected when you have a House of Representatives being run by Bronwyn Bishop and Chris Pyne. With such a duo in charge there’s little hope for anything other than petulant partisanship half the time and partisan petulance for the other 50 per cent.
But there were moments if we let our eyes drift, ever so oddly, away from the supposed importance of Question Time to the actual business of the parliament, which did see parliament at its best.
The Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2013 was debated and passed in the House this week. The Bill had bipartisan support – mostly because it was very similar to a Bill put forward by the previous government. Its purpose is to improve the provision of assistance to veterans – specifically those who were involved in the British nuclear tests in the 1950s.
These men were treated with callous disregard by the British and Australian military at the time, and Andrew Leigh recalled in his speech on Tuesday one 19yo whose job was to drive out to ground zero an hour after the blast and unearth instruments that were buried there to monitor the explosion. Dr Leigh noted that:
'The Army gave them shovels—and steaks for a good meal afterwards. But the Army did not provide anything to cook the steaks with. So, Corporal Hutton says, he and his squad just washed the dirt off the shovels and cooked their steak and eggs on them, over a fire.'
But not all bipartisanship is parliament at its best. For there was also bipartisanship agreement on the Migration Amendment Bill 2013. This Bill’s purpose is to take away asylum seekers’ rights to appeal through our legal system should they receive an adverse report from ASIO, and also to strengthen the ability for the government to detain asylum seekers indefinitely.
Congratulations to the ALP and LNP on reinforcing just that bit more that we really like treating asylum seekers like dirt.
Only Adam Bandt, Cathy McGowan and Andrew Wilkie voted against the Bill.
As for other opportunities to show off the great work of parliament, these were rather limited. You would think a new government in a new year would have masses of legislation ready to go, but you would be wrong.
On Wednesday we had the odd situation of the government shutting down debate on an ALP matter of public importance so that 'the business of the day' could 'be called on'. The only problem was there was no business to be called on. The government had no bills scheduled to be debated.
Not to worry they also had all Thursday to debate bills. And what did they spend most of the time debating? A Bill called the 'Tax Bonus for Working Australians Repeal Bill 2013'. Thus most of the day was spent debating this piece of legislation designed to stop any stimulus money not yet spent from being paid to whoever was entitled to it.
The real reason for the Bill was to allow government MPs to make speech after speech slamming the ALP for 'profligate waste'. It allowed one government MP, Craig Kelly, to even refer to the 'so-called GFC', because in his view it didn’t affect China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia.
The Bill will save around $250,000 over the next 4 years. Not bad given the total stimulus spend was $42 billion.
That was the only piece of legislation debated yesterday – 19 speeches in all. And all talking about events that occurred in 2008-09 and who was to blame and who was to praise.
All of which suggests that while debating legislation is when parliament is at its best, there are also plenty of examples where doing so also see it at its worst.
Greg Jericho is an economics and politics blogger and writes for The Guardian and The Drum.
