World First: Cross-benchers discovered in Tasmania

“A crossbencher is an independent or minor party member of some legislatures, such as the British House of Lords and Australian Senate. They take their name from the crossbenches, between and perpendicular to the government and opposition benches, where crossbenchers sit in the chamber.”

Link –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbencher

This search was prompted by Sue Neales’ Mercury story (Thursday 6 May 2010), headlined “Greens cut across benches” –

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/05/05/144145_tasmania-news.html

– in which We the People were informed that the “Greens have won agreement from the Government for the elegant new blackwood and huon pine parliamentary desks and benches in the Lower House to be literally split into three segments”, and that “Greens leader Nick McKim said it was vital the House of Assembly had a proper place for a ‘cross-bench’ party like the Greens to sit”, and that “last year’s renovations had not been designed with the current ‘unique’ make-up of the parliament in mind”.

It took me less than one minute to google that introductory sentence from the relevant Wikipedia entry, so neither the concept nor the construction was exactly a deep, dark, State secret, and an answer is needed to the question which that cartoon character from the 90s kept yelling (from a pram, was it?): ‘Who’s responsible?’

Surely someone in the planning ‘process’ must have known that the Hare-Clark system produces crossbenchers – after all, it has been doing so in our Parliament for 114 years since 1896, and the 153 year-old system dates from 1857 – enough time, you’d reckon. Does this mean that those planning the improvements were stupid ignoramuses, or did that page fall out of the tender docs?

And a few more points while I’ve got your attention:

~ for the Liberals – these alterations (and whether they are “major” is itself quite a question) are not being made just for “tokenistic” and “symbolic” reasons, as the easily “outraged” Liberals seem to think (if that’s the right word for their mental processes) – crossbenches are essential to a parliamentary layout, especially ours, and Hodgman Jnr et al are sounding like kindergarten kids deprived of lollies; and

~ did the Greens themselves put in their two-bob’s worth in the ‘process’ stage to secure this layout, and, if it was deliberately being thwarted, or just being overlooked, did they yell out loud and clear then & there? Waiting till now, if that was a deliberate tactic, puts part of the blame on them;

~ was Labor complicit in this in any way, either seeing it a nice little distractor, or reckoning it an oh-so-clever tactic to embarrass their major opponents, the Greens?

~ or was it a KRudd-style stuff-up at management and construction level, perhaps through out-sourcing to those ignorant of the details of parliamentary layout, or to foreigners?

Lose-lose-lose all round – and reminds me of a question in a previous article: are those in public administration getting more and more stupid by the decade? Or are the media reporting it more than before?