Gags, guillotines create a chamber of horrors

I’ve never been a great fan of the senate. When Gough got it in the neck I wasn’t old enough to vote, but I was old enough to be angry. How did it make sense that an upper house could choke a government that had been twice elected by the Australian people within the space of three years?

I wondered too, why we awarded six-year sinecures, thereby ensuring that we had a chamber steeped in the political will of the electorate as it was three, four, or five years previously.

Further, I could never understand why the Tasmanian population of three and a dog came to elect the same number of senators as the far more numerous - and much smarter - Victorians.

True, there have been some skilled and hardworking senators over the years. Equally, there have been some fairly undistinguished individuals lolling away their days on the red leather benches, counting down the weeks to the winter break and that crucial fact-finding mission to the Bahamas.

So when Keating called them “unrepresentative swill” I laughed along with the rest. And I had harsh things to say to friends who divulged that they voted for different parties in the Senate than the House of Representatives.

Madness, I snickered. Choose the mob that you think will do the best job. Then have the courage of your convictions and let them get on with things.

Now I’m laughing on the other side of my face.

In July last year, when the government gained control of the senate, the prime minister offered po-faced assurances that he would be “modest” and “humble” with this additional power. But it may have been a non-core promise.

All the evidence is that Howard is taking the sword to the senate. Gags, guillotines and other instruments of malevolence are produced as required by the government to ensure that the upper house doesn’t get carried away with the niceties of democracy.

Romantic prattle about scrutinising and reviewing legislation is all very well, but the prime minister has a country to run.

And the greatest blight on the speedy and efficient discharge of the government’s responsibilities has been the operation of the senate committees.

These mavericks behave as a law unto themselves, and persist in undertaking the kind of thorough and diligent research that does grave damage to the body politic.

For example, the committee which revealed that those unfortunate children were not thrown overboard, seriously undermined public confidence in our elected leadership.

No one wants to think that our PM tells porkies.

Fortunately, this dangerous and uncontrolled flow of facts is to become a thing of the past. In reducing the number of committees and ensuring that they will be chaired by the government, our ever-vigilant prime minister has put these senatorial malcontents back in their boxes.

If they don’t like it here, they can go and live in Russia.

In truth, the senate committees have been crucial in bearing witness to the way in which the Howard Government’s policies are dragging Indigenous Australia down.

These committees have the time and the clout to find out what is really happening and to place it on the public record.

In March 2005, a senate committee produced a report called After ATSIC - Life in the mainstream? which served to delay the assassination of ATSIC, and to record some home truths about the importance of preserving an elected, national Indigenous representative body.

Late last month, the senate’s Community Affairs References Committee handed down its report into petrol sniffing in Indigenous communities.

Predictably and properly they endorsed the urgent need for a comprehensive roll-out of non-sniffable Opal fuel.

They also identified the immediate need for better policing and for Indigenous Australians to be directly involved in the development and delivery of community-based programs to lend greater meaning to the lives of disaffected young people.

Significantly, the workings of the committee also took some of our elected leaders to the far-flung corners of Australia for a first hand look at the devastation petrol sniffing causes.

Parliamentarians who can mentally transport themselves back to Balgo or Halls Creek are an enormous asset to deliberations about Indigenous Australia which are conducted in the sterile confines of the House on the Hill.

Aboriginal Australia has some staunch allies in the upper house, particularly among the Democrats and Greens.

However the system which enables the valorous deeds of the stout warriors from the minor parties is itself under attack.

The only thing worse than a slow, cumbersome senate committee system will be its demise.