The Australian Senate was the site of most of the action last week as parliament resumed. On Friday, the red chamber sat alone, going until after 4am on Saturday morning as Liberals and Nationals spun out the debate on whether there should be a Voice referendum, led by the pen-pointing cyborg-impersonator Michaelia Cash.
Earlier in the week, the Senate heard parliamentary-protected allegations from independent Senator Lidia Thorpe that Victorian Liberal Senator David Van and other ‘powerful men’ in parliament had behaved inappropriately, with sexual comments, propositions and unwanted touching leading her to believe that federal parliament was not safe for women.
This was followed by further revelations about Senator Van from former Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker about sexual harassment, which led Liberal leader Peter Dutton to finally do something about this man whose only previous moment in the spotlight related to him making dog noises while Jacqui Lambie was speaking.
Having been told to resign, Senator Van quit the Liberal Party, but refused to leave the Senate before the end of his term.
Meanwhile
While the opposition sought to further weaponise the Lehrmann/Higgins rape allegation by attacking now Finance Minister Senator Katy Gallagher over how much she knew before the story became public back in 2021, a few things actually moved forward.
There was progress on the affordable housing debate (there will be an additional $2bn for social housing after sustained pressure from the Greens), and the government established Creative Australia to update and strengthen the old Arts Council, promising to improve things for the nation’s (non-operatic) artists since the bad old days of COVID and George Brandis.
In a week when the global climate crisis officially worsened, again (and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said ‘we are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open’), debate was postponed on Labor’s plan to give billions more to the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund (known for backing tropical white elephants), along with Zali Steggall’s associated proposal to remove climate-damaging projects from consideration for further public money.
Verbal torture
Late last week, the Senate’s attention swung back to the Voice referendum, with the opposition delaying the inevitable by subjecting government representatives and observers to a particularly unpleasant form of verbal torture which continued for most of Friday and then well beyond midnight, repeatedly asking questions which had already been answered, apparently in the hope of generating ammunition for further scare campaigning.
Labor Senators Murray Watt and Malarndirri McCarthy bore most of the brunt of this appalling, time wasting attack, led by Senators Michaelia Cash and Jacinta Nampijimpa Price, with support from Bridget McKenzie and a rotating gallery of sniggering supporters. Senator Pat Dodson, unwell, was not present in the chamber.
After some fiery words of truth to power about the history of Australia, Senator Lidia Thorpe tried and failed to amend the bill to include a new section about the sovereignty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Senator Watt said the constitutional expert group had concluded that the Voice provision would have no impact on sovereignty. He said the Voice was necessary because it was a new approach to heal the wounds and injustices of the past, and all the old approaches had failed.
Over multiple questions, Michaelia Cash sought to discredit the Voice proposal on the grounds of legal jeopardy, cost, and risk.
Senator Jacinta Nampijimpa Price said the people who were invited to contribute to the Uluru Statement from the Heart were not truly representative. She talked at length about abuse of Aboriginal women by Aboriginal men, questioned whether the Voice would help remote communities in any way, and suggested that First Nations people (an inappropriate Canadian term, in her view), were already represented by people in parliament such as herself.
Senator Cash objected to Senator Watt’s answer to many questions of detail in the Voice, which was that these would be decided by parliament – comprising all parties – if the referendum succeeded.
Claiming to be acting in the interests of future Australians, and courts, Senator Cash wasted hours questioning already accepted definitions of such things as Aboriginality and executive power, apparently confusing the Senate for a courtroom and herself for a prosecutor.
Lawyers or communicators?
The whole sorry display was a reminder that lawyers are perhaps not the best people to be in parliament, with the adversarial system in their DNA and of little use in nation-building, where unification and joint purpose is required.
First-time NT Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, who comes from a media background, said, ‘We have to improve the lives for our people across this country, First Nations and all Australians… That’s what this time in Australia’s history is about. To take the leap of faith to be a better people, a better country with all our faults, and to do it with dignity and determination.
‘This is your chance to be a part of something special to create the Australia that we could have done a long time ago, if we’d had the opportunity,’ she said.
Senator McCarthy described the referendum as ‘an invitation to walk in faith, with hope and with a great deal of love. That means everyone. We can do this. We should do this. We must do this,’ she said.
The 2023 referendum on a Voice to Parliament will only succeed if it achieves a majority of supporters in a majority of states. This is a very high bar to clear, as both sides know very well. No referendum has ever succeeded without bipartisan support, and only one referendum has ever succeeded under Labor.
The Senate is likely to approve the Voice referendum later today, with national campaigns pushing the Yes and No cases due to ramp up before the people of Australia have their say later this year (the ironically named Australians For Unity won deductible-gift status to campaign against the Voice on Friday).
Sadly, if what has happened so far is anything to go by, the nastiness and division surrounding this issue has barely begun.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
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