Poor Mr Gray!

I am inclined to believe that we should remunerate our politicians well. But it seems to me irrelevant that Gary Gray, the Special Minister of State, apparently took a $400,000 pay cut to enter the Federal Parliament. He did that with eyes wide open, and obviously decided that it was worth doing that to gain what ever he thought he was going to gain. Presumably power!
Is there not a flaw in the logic that suggests we should only be trying to attract those who make salaries which are five to ten times the national average (and more)? Could it not also be argued that people who have struggled on a third or half of an MP’s salary have a great deal to offer also because of their ability to empathise with a whole section of the electorate who understand what financial hardship really is?

The Farce. Act II

Could not believe Katter's performance on Q& A last night! I have been spending the week telling folks that he is not as bad as he was. But I am afraid that I have to revise that estimation.

He says many wise things. But he is a bully of a man, who can only deal with criticism by force, shouting down his opponents. Refusing to engage in any constructive dialogue that dares to critique his narrow views.

That was scene 1 of this Act II

Scene 2. Was his appearance at a bizarre Press Conferenece at 1 p.m. today. At which he pontificated and procrastinated. One can only wonder why. He went on and on.

There seemed only one dynamic that was at play here. He was holding a separate Press Conference because his conclusion was different from the other two.

He supported the coalition.

Thank goodness, despite Rob Oakshot's equally tedious prevarication (15 mins), he and Windsor went with Ms Gillard. I will blog later about the one really good thing that Oakshot said and the saintly Fr Spencer Dunkerley who foreshadowed him by 40 years

Scalping the scalpless!

After over a decade of Howard Government Minister refusing to resign over a variety of failures in their portfolios, there is certain sense of irony about they baying at the door Peter Garrett. He is of course a high-profile minister, probably the most instantly recognisable after the PM, and there would seem to be little doubt that things are not as they should be with regard to the supervision of the home-insulation fiasco.
Under my old rules, (the buck stops here), he should probably go. In the light of the experience of the last decade, no one takes ultimate responsibility for anything and ministers don't resign.
As I have observed before about garrett (and indeed about Turnbull...) as one who is not a 'dyed in the wool' politician. I suspect he will tire of the political game playing, and get out. To much time trying to get the upper hand instead of addressing the issues.
Turnbull and Garrett wanted to change things, not ultimately to see one party victorious over another at any cost. In the end will they both have to realise that Parliament is not the place for idealism? I suspect so!

Parliamentary Reform

I agree with Business SA (The Advertiser 11 January) that we need serious parliamentary reform in South Australia. But I don't quite understand how the abolition of compulsory voting would add to this, unless we want to encourage people not to take an interest in how we are governed or what our elected representatives get up to, which seems the very opposite of what is being proposed by the business lobby.

It is trite to say, as Peter Vaughan apparently does, that 'democracy' requires the abolition of compulsory voting. Democracy requires responsibility, and the key responsibility for the elector is to vote.

In the end we are not required to vote for any one particular person or party in Australia, we may choose to exercise our democratic responsibility and vote informal. But it is to our credit as a nation and as a state that all adults are permitted to vote and are required to act responsibly by so doing.

What a debacle!

I DO turn on Question time every day at 2 p.m., despite my revulsion and the obvious reality that it is a total waste of time.

Today they asked the same old questions, and gave the same old answers. Today they moved 5 abortive procedural motions wasting about half of Question Time any way.

We delude ourselves if we think that Parliament has any meaning beyond its four walls!!!!

The debacle of scalping

Once again this week we will be diverted by our Federal Parliament (on both sides) trying to get another scalp. This time the Federal Treasurer and/or the PM (good luck with that) is in the sights of the Opposition, and the PM (in a quiet measured way) gave notice that two can play at that game (quite good background here...poor old Mr Grech)

My question is not about the substance of this, 

[though I do find myself wondering  why it is so strange that politicians should be being criticised for being available to people who are worried about their businesses collapsing]

but in reality is this what we pay our politicians to do. This is, of course, posturing for the cameras. I am not suggesting that "misleading the Parliament" is not serious, and if Treasurer Swan has done so then he should probably go. Though I have noted before that the previous government seemed to have long ago stopped requiring Ministers to fall on their sword. 

Hardly surprising from a government led by a man whose misplaced hubris prevented him from apologising for almost anything...certainly for the grossest abuses to the weakest in our society.

But I ask again....is this  posturing.... on either side what we pay our politicians to be and do?

I think not!

O is for

"ORDER! ORDER!": The oft heard remark of the Speaker in the Parliament. It doesn't seem to have much effect.

Out to lunch

Alexander Downer spotted out to lunch instead of at Question Time said that was more productive than listening to to the droning of Julia Gillard.

Well excuse me! I have all sorts of things I have to go to & hear people drivel on (they no doubt think the same of me) and I go because that is what I get paid to do.

But aaaah! the hubris of the fallen. The disdain with which the former Foreign Minister treats the Parliament that has done OK by him.

I note again that his by-election (if and when it happen) will cost the taxpayer nearly half a million dollars.

What arrogance!

Waste of Question Time

Yesterday, as I quite often do, I sat down with my sandwich and watched the beginning of Question Time. A couple of things of interest... I will not say interesting things....happened.
First, the broadcast began about thirty seconds after the first question had been asked. (This didn't actually matter as it turned out that the same question was to be asked over and over again).
This caused the PM about three or four minutes in to actually deliberately recap on his opening remarks...ie. let's not talk about what our government has done but about what the Hawke-Keating did.
This interested me because the recap was obviously done because somehow the PM must have found out his introductory remarks had not been broadcast, and he actually said something like ...For the benefit of those who may have missed it and for the broader audience...and then repeated his opening statement.
I didn't see anyone giving him any note to tell him that his opening marks had been missed. And I wondered whether he was wired so that someone was speaking into an earpiece (this would be the most satisfactory explanation of his seamless segue (pron: sɛgweɪ), but if it was so then it is a little sinister. To be fair I couldn't detect any such device. But it does make you wonder who this 'broader audience' is and why this was necessary.
Any way the second thing of interest, or disinterest really, was that Rudd just kept asking the same question about Howard's promises about not allowing interest rates to rise. Howard just refused to admit that he had made such a promise and deflected everything to talk about the Hawke-Keating government.
Rudd kept asking the same question. Howard gave the same answer.
It does make you ask: what is the point?
I know there is an argument that asking government questions is a democratic freedom we should treasure, but it has become so stylistic and predictable that a pretty good argument can also be made for the fact that it is simply a waste of time. Even if you add the paid time of Rudd and Howard together it seems something of a waste. Pity really!

Prayers in the Parliament

This all rather makes the debate about prayers in Australian chambers of governmnet seem rather maudlin

Waste of space

There is a fluttering question going on about Parliamentary prayers at the moment. The local paper's question of the day is "Are prayers before Parliament a waste of time?"
This question has many interesting dimensions.
The three Vox Pops were interesting: One said...If you believe it then it is not a waste of time, I'm a Catholic so that's OK...another said...If you don't believe there is not much point, I do so that would be OK for me...and the final one said...People believe a lot of different things, so if you have prayers for Christians you should have other prayers as well
These points are true enough on a naive level, though I find it interesting that people in praying to God think that it matters that they believe, as if God might be powerless to act unless we beleive that it is so.
Research shows that though remarkably few Australians are regular church goers any more, a surpisingly high number still pray and believe in God. Recently I noted that our beloved PM had exhorted us all to pray for rain (here...and by the way it seems to have worked!!) and some of the questions that that raises.
My recent peregrinations have caused me to reflect quite a bit on the way religious practice conveys not only spiritual value but also cultural identity. (This is sooooooo Sociology IA)
In Italy there is not a moment when you escape overt religionism, and yet the culture is remarkably untroubled by it. In France to be religious is to be different, it was best characterised by the 400 or so people who were at Mass at the Sacre Coeur at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, a quiet mysterious event which contrasted markedly with the drunken busking that was going on on the steps outside...the two crowds remarkably similar in social makeup.
In England there was the driest of the dry Eucharist at the Abbey, which although it was tres Anglican, seemed to connect little with the spiritual.
This latter aspect best typifies what happens in the Australian Parliaments, prayers rattled off correctly but without any passion. The words are often those of the past from which the Church has moved on decades ago and are filled with anachronisms (thee and thy) and gender bias (assuming the masculine includes the feminine) . Often it seems that the saying of these prayers is about asserting the Parliament's continuation with tradition rather than the Parliament's reliance on God's grace. This is less than satisfactory to me.
Personally, I think there needs to be something about prayer that is a waste of time.
Whether it be Parliamentary or personal.
When we pray, however badly or well, there should seem to be some sense of the fact that we are relying on God, not that we are manipulating God through our belief or unbelief. This is more than just saying well "It doesn't do any harm!" It is an attitude about a cultural value that says not everything is or can be under our control.
But it's a pretty brave thing to say or do.

Curiouser & Curiouser

It is curious to receive communication from the Family First Party about maintaining Eccelsiastical privilege in legislation.
Belonging to a denomination which has often been accused of exercising undue influence in the Parliaments of this land in a quasi-established-church way I sometimes detect from some of these newer groups a sort of influence envy. Indeed this would seem to be a major dynamic in the formation of Family First...a wish to influence the politcial process. This is so obvious that it doesn't need to be spelled out.
The Anglican Church should remind these folk of that which it needs to periodically remind itself, something to do with cutlery required for supping with the devil (hence the cartoon).
The particular matter that the Honourables Evans & Hood put before us is the seeming removal of the church's right to vilify whomsoever it likes in the name of preaching and "Biblical" teaching.
To be sure they name these issues rather differently "REMOVING" the right to preach and the right to counsel.; which is I sufggest something of a furphy.
There is a real question to be asked here of whether anyone should be allowed to say anything they like in the name of religious faith. I just think this is not on.
While they are particularly citing (surprise, surprise) the right to call a spade a sodomite; if this is to be taken to its logical conclusion then would they be so keen to allow a Calathumpian to say that Pentecostals are narrow-minded bigots, or that Christians in general are polytheistic cannibals, or that Jews add the blood of children to the Passover loaf. [Students of history will note that I use those examples because they represent real accusations of the past]
My problems is that I think it is a very selective exegesis of how Christians are supposed to practise their faith and live as responsible citizens. My reading of (particularly Paul's) teaching about citizenship is that we should be exemplary in complying to the laws of the State, and require at least as much, and probably more, compliance and obedience as the general populace.
Surely when it comes to decrying vilification we shouldn't be reserving the right to vilify who we like, we should be at the forefront of compliance.
I do not want to stifle public debate, or give permission for the sermon police to be formed. But being religious does not give me, or anyone else the right to insult, demean or diminish the rights of anyone else.