Skip to main content

Democracy at Work?

Today saw marches against the new IR laws around Australia. All that John Howard and Kevin Andrews could say was that in a year's time people would wonder what all the fuss had been about.

I suspect that this issue will not go away. Messrs Howard and Andrew have set course on creating a devisive, and angry, Australia on a mammoth scale. Howard is dismissive of those who protest. What is seemingly forgotten in all of this is that some 70 % of those polled are against the new IR laws. That's a majority by an reckoning. Remember that some 70% were against Oz committing to the Iraq War. That didn't stop Howard going ahead anyway.

So, where is the democracy in all of this? It's not! The whole approach of the Government is perhaps demonstrated by this small item. The proposed Act is some 700 pages and the Explanatory Statement some 650 pages. On introduction of the Bill to the House, 4 [yes 4!] copies of the Bill and Explanatory Statement were provided to the Opposition. Now that allows for fulsome and informed debate!

How this all plays out before the legislation is actually passed may well depend on how Senator Barnaby Joyce responds to all of this new legislation. Read what Tim Colebatch had to say in The Age today.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Democracy doesn't mean "rule-by-opinion-poll" and I would expect you to understand that. It means people periodically get a chance to kick the people who run the country out of power. In between elections, the people who run the country have to make a calculation between what they belive to be best for the country and what is popular. Sometimes this means they take hard decisions.
November 16, 2005 12:15 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...
Post a Comment
Read more