LABOR’S Helen Polley came dressed for action in a smart red business suit, but it was a Green strategy that dominated much of the opening session of the new-look Senate yesterday.
Polley was joined by the Greens’ Christine Milne (dressed in purple) and the Liberals’ Stephen Parry (single-breasted black suit) as the new senators from Tasmania were sworn into office before Governor-General Michael Jeffery (pompous ceremonial attire).
Re-elected Libs Eric Abetz and Guy Barnett, as well as Labor’s Kerry O’Brien, stood with the new kids on the block as they all simultaneously swore their allegiances.
The fact that some (Abetz, Barnett, Parry and Polley) chose to swear an oath on the Bible while the others instead read an affirmation — all at the same time — meant nobody could understand anything any of them were saying.
All new and re-elected senators were summoned before the Guv six at a time to read their allegiances on a State-by-State basis in an incoherent ramble.
They could have been swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden for all the Head of State could tell.
But once that was over, with Tasmania being called up fourth out of six states, it was down to the pointy end of business.
With Bass MHR Michael Ferguson watching from the reserve and Tasmania’s Speaker of the House Michael Polley and clerk Peter Alcock looking down from the public gallery, the clerk of the Senate called for nominations for the office of President.
The Government now enjoys a majority of one in the Senate so the re-election of Tasmania’s Paul Calvert as Senate President should have been a given non-event.
But Greens’ leader Bob Brown was having none of it. He rose amid angry heckling to nominate fellow Greens Senator Kerry Nettle for the lofty position.
“She will not fail to promote the Senate’s role as a watchdog,” he said.
“She will protect the independence of the Senate.”
Doubling of the Greens’ numbers in the Senate to four must have boosted Senator Brown’s confidence enormously, as his ambitious nomination indicated.
Warning
But alas, the secret ballot resulted in Senator Calvert being elected with 67 votes, while Senator Nettle secured a healthy seven.
The normally 76-member Senate chamber was reduced by two yesterday with Tasmania’s Sue MacKay having suddenly resigned and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone absent with a punctured eardrum.
The depleted ranks of the Democrats added three votes to the Greens’ nomination, with a fourth Dem, Andrew Murray not able to bring himself to vote for Nettle.
While Calvert was “dragged” to the President’s chair by his colleagues Abetz and Senator John Watson, Brown reached behind him to shake Nettle’s hand as though she had just won the ballot.
Party leaders rose to congratulate Senator Calvert on his reappointment as President — even Family First Senator Steve Fielding broke the rule of never speaking in the chamber before delivering a maiden speech so he could extend his best wishes on behalf of his party of one.
But when Senator Brown rose to congratulate the President he delivered his regards with a warning.
“The role of the President is to keep politics out of the chair,” he said before castigating Calvert for changing the gameplan of Question Time without consultation.
With the new Senate in the Government’s favour, the Government decided it wanted more friendly questions to be asked of it. And so the President agreed, before his re-election it would seem, that Government senators could ask more Dorothy Dixers of their ministers.
“Your first process there sir is more of the foul than the fair,” Brown declared.
Opposition Senate leader Chris Evans later bought into debate over the Government’s new plans for Question Time with a telling one liner.
“Dorothy Dixers were a farce when we were in government and they are a farce now,” he said.
Continuing his mission to rescue the Senate, Brown subsequently nominated Milne for deputy president but failed to even convince the Democrats on that count.
Which at the end of the day meant the Greens succeeded in making a lot of senators see red over a procedure with an outcome that was always going to be pretty black and white.
Chris Johnson, former chief political reporter for The Examiner, is now a federal political reporter for The West Australian. A member of the Canberra Press Gallery, he will be writing regularly for Tasmanian Times on Canberra politics — with a Tasmanian slant.
