Governments of either persuasion don’t like it when they don’t get their own way in the Senate.
However, in recent days the Rudd government has taken the levels of whingeing, moaning and sulking about so called ‘Senate obstruction’ to new levels. No doubt this is all part of a deliberate pre-election strategy, seeking to justify the government’s failings and perhaps even the need for a double dissolution election.
No less than five senior Ministers fronted a press conference last week accusing the Senate of the worst obstruction in 30 years, while the Prime Minister shouted ‘get out of our way’.
The Prime Minister took hysterical pre-election spin another step further when, incredibly, he compared himself to Barrack Obama and the troubles he is facing in getting health care reform through the US Senate.
Whatever the merits of Obama’s reform proposals, where Kevin Rudd did nothing to progress health reform for more than 2 years in office, at least Barrack Obama put his political neck on the line pushing for the passage of his healthcare reform plan in his first year in office. Kevin Rudd promised the world on health before the last election. He supposedly had a plan to fix public hospitals.
Yet, rather than implement that plan he did nothing post-election other than run a 20-month review, followed by a review into that same review with photo opportunities around Australia. Yes and he sought to impose a number of spending cuts on privately insured Australians to help fund his reckless spending in other areas. And now, with the proverbial five minutes to go before the next election we are promised another plan to fix public hospitals.
But I digress.
Getting back to the main point – our Senate is not obstructionist. Our Senate is doing the job it was set up to do. As Senators we are doing the job we were elected to do and that is what the public expects of us.
As legislators we have a responsibility to make a judgement on legislation put forward by the government of the day. Put simply, if the government puts forward good legislation we will support it, and if they put forward bad legislation, which in our judgement is not in the public interest, we will oppose it.
At times of course the government will cave in to pressure from the Coalition and crossbench Senators and reconsider bad legislation or negotiate necessary improvements. Take the government’s attempt to cut patient rebates for cataract surgery in half. A measure which would have hurt hundreds of thousands of mostly elderly patients, who would no longer have been able to afford access to this life changing surgery or who would have been forced to join lengthy public hospital queues.
Or the government’s attempt to impose a $100 million funding cut on chemotherapy treatment, which would have hurt thousands of cancer patients across Australia. Senate scrutiny and ultimately opposition forced the government back to the drawing board on both of these, leading to better outcomes for patients across Australia. There are many other such examples.
However, some measures cannot be improved even by amendments. The government’s great big new tax on emissions for example, which if passed would push up the price of everything, cost jobs and put pressure on our economy without reducing global emissions. Or Labor’s broken promise on private health insurance rebates, which would lead to additional pressure on our public hospitals, increased costs and fewer people in private health insurance. Or the government’s attempt last week to push through legislation to force the break-up of Telstra – a publicly listed company.
No pre-election mandate, no proper justification, serious implications for hundreds of thousands of mum and dad investors and tens of thousands of Telstra staff and why? To cover up the government’s failure to deliver on its ill-thought out pre-election promise to deliver on a national broadband network.
With all this it is important to remember that the Coalition cannot stop legislation in the Senate on its own. Government legislation only gets defeated if other Senators agree with our judgement that a particular piece of legislation is flawed and not in the public interest.
At times, the government gets their way even though in our judgement they shouldn’t have. The government’s reckless spending through its $42 billion stimulus package is a high profile example of that. The government was able to get that through the Senate after negotiation with crossbench Senators. Considering the results of the home insulation fiasco, the widespread waste and mismanagement in the school halls program and the upward pressure Labor’s reckless spending has put on interest rates since.
If only the Senate had stood firm on that occasion as well.
Governments not having a majority in the Senate makes for better policy outcomes and for better government. In the House of Representatives the government has the power of numbers and will always win the day, even if they’re obviously going down the wrong path.
However, in the Senate, given the government doesn’t have the numbers they have to better justify their decisions – not only to the Senate, but ultimately to the public at large. That is an important safeguard.
This is a deliberate part of the checks and balances imposed by our forefathers on any Commonwealth Government in our Constitution.
The Rudd government has become arrogant very quickly. They don’t accept or respect the legitimate and important role of the Senate to scrutinise legislation and the performance of the government. Yet, considering the Senate’s track record both in recent times and throughout our history, it has served us very well as a safeguard against bad government.
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