Gags, guillotines create a chamber of horrors

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.