PM Drunk On Political Power

by Glenn Milne - The Australian

John Howard's final triumph for the year, the passage of his Voluntary Student Unionism Bill, came at a price the public never got to see: the worst trashing of the Senate I've witnessed in 20 years of covering federal politics.

One of the oldest adages in politics goes like this: "If you've got the numbers, use them." When it comes to the Senate, Howard is doing just that. Brutally. We're not talking only about the passage of legislation in the upper house, where the government has the thinnest of majorities in the form of Barnaby Joyce. What was trampled in the Senate on Friday was the democratic process of the parliament.

It was the culmination of dangerous practices that began immediately back in July when the Government's new found majority kicked in. And it is set to continue next year as the government's control of both houses of parliament tightens. Process rarely becomes the story in politics. But if the Howard Government continues down the road of ruthlessly emasculating the Senate, it will become an issue of both politics and principle that could ultimately threaten the Coalition's upper house majority at the next election.

On Friday, we were treated to the extraordinary spectacle of government senators filibustering on their own bills after days of gagging and guillotining on much more important pieces of legislation. Why? Because Joyce had signalled he'd be taking a walk on the VSU legislation: to the other side of the chamber. That meant elsewhere in Parliament House -- notably the Prime Minister's office -- negotiations were frantically continuing to secure the casting vote of Family First senator Steve Fielding, aka the Government's planB.

Labor's Penny Wong belled the cat. As debate dragged on over the vitally important national issues of amendments to allow the establishment of the first offshore university in South Australia, and Mongolia joining the European Bank -- that's right, Mongolia joining the European Bank -- Wong got to her feet.

Angered by the addition of yet another government senator to the list of speakers, she snapped: "We are now seeing yet again an addition to this ridiculous filibuster the chamber is being asked to endure while this Government beats up on Senator Joyce and Senator Fielding to get the deal through after they have truncated debate and guillotined debate on controversial bills."

While the Senate was forced to grind on, mired in irrelevance, Fielding wasn't even there as he bargained furiously with the Prime Minister. When the VSU bill finally hit the table, Fielding insisted there had been no deal to get his vote, although he later conceded to the media that the issue of a continuing government ban on the abortion pill RU486 may have been discussed.

The Senate, meanwhile, began debating amendments to the VSU legislation subject to the Fielding-Howard deal, without the Opposition and minor parties even having seen them. Neither did they know what concessions Fielding may have screwed out of the Government or whether they were going to be incorporated into the bill. It was an ugly travesty.

Labor's Senate leader Chris Evans put it well as he reflected on the events of the day: "More Senate time has been spent on a minor bill -- about which all parties agree -- than was spent on either the welfare-to-work or anti-terrorism committee stages...

"Australians expect the Senate to scrutinise legislation but it is clear the Government does not want scrutiny of its actions; it would rather just ram its extreme agenda down the throat of the Senate and the Australian people."

The Government has form here. It started early. On the first day of the new Senate, the Coalition unilaterally changed the allocation of questions, awarding itself two extra each day at the expense of non-government senators.

On the Telstra privatisation bill, concerning a mere $30 billion of taxpayers' assets, the Government gagged debate. The gag was used three times. The Government then allowed only a one-day Senate inquiry, two days after the bills were introduced, effectively excluding the public from the process and giving the Labor spokesman on communications only 12 minutes to question regulators.

On September 7, government senators voted down a referral to the privileges committee of the evidence put to the Finance and Public Administration References Committee's inquiry into Regional Partnerships program (aka Regional Rorts) by the Mayor of Wyong, only the second time that such a reference has been denied since the privileges committee was established in 1966.

The Senate inquiry into the Government's IR reforms had only five days to question 105 witnesses and to process more than 5000 submissions, and then had one day to prepare its report. That's right: one day, for a piece of legislation universally regarded as the most radical overhaul of Australia's workplaces since Federation.

Again on IR: just 39 minutes before the committee stage in the Senate, the Government presented 337 amendments, 98 pages of them. That gave non-government senators only seven seconds to read and digest each amendment before they had to begin debating them.

The Government's anti-terror and welfare bills were guillotined and gagged on December 5. In total the Senate gag has been used more often since July 1 than it was in the first nine years of the Howard Government: 10 times against nine times. The government's real attitude to the Senate was best summed up on August 11, the third day of sitting after the Coalition majority was established. The Nationals' Julian McGauran gave the finger to non-government senators during a vote count. Howard may have condemned McGauran at the time, but his every action since has supported that gesture. Drunk on power, the Government is now treating the Senate as its after-party pissoir.

I'll leave you with a thought from Alexis de Tocqueville, penned in 1835: "Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing; human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.

"When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on a people or upon a king, upon an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I recognise the germ of tyranny."

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