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It was former Prime Minister Paul Keating who once famously referred to the Senate as “unrepresentative swill”, presumably at a time when the Senate wasn’t supporting whatever it was he wanted to do.
Apart from the final term of the Howard government, the Government of the day has rarely had the numbers in the Senate to push through their agenda, certainly since the political crisis of 1975.
That the Government of the day is never complimentary of the Senate should be a hint to all of us that in fact the Senate does a pretty good job at holding the Government to account (power corrupts; checks and balances; and all that).
Some of the Senate’s very best work, which is mainly invisible to the majority of Australians who are generally more concerned about how their footy team is going (a sentiment I understand completely), involves the work of the Senate Committees, who spend their time investigating the latest hair brained scheme being put forward by the Government (giving money away; building white elephants, pork barrelling etc).
The range of things the Committees look into are quite varied, including: gene patents; bank mergers; childcare; the welfare of international students; access to justice; bushfires in Australia; climate policy and men’s health.
In other words, stuff that actually affects the daily lives of all of us.
But occasionally the committees look into things that strike one as odd.
I’ve only just discovered that the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee recently completed an enquiry entitled: Matters relating to the establishment of an Australian Football League team for Tasmania.
Call me crazy, but this seems like a bizarre subject for our elected federal representatives to worry themselves about.
Part of the scope of the inquiry was to determine “whether the decision of the Australian Football League (AFL) Board of Commission to prioritise admission to its competition of teams from Western Sydney and the Gold Coast over a proposed team for Tasmania is fair and equitable.”
I would have thought a commercial body should be able to make its own decisions as to where it will focus its operations without having to worry about the equity of such decisions. It’s a bit like telling BHP to put its head office in Alice Springs in the interests of equity.
This bit is really interesting. An argument in favour of the AFL establishing a team in Tasmania put forward was to ward off the threat of soccer in that state.
I kid you not – it’s in the report!
This is the Committee’s conclusion: “Finally, the committee is of the view that the committee’s plan for a Western Sydney team are very ambitious. Although it is not the committee’s intention to tell the AFL how it should manage its expansion plans, there are cultural barriers facing a Western Sydney-based AFL team that appear to be insurmountable.”
The gratuitous advice from the Committee does not end there, the report continues: “There must be concern, however, that primary school-aged children participating in modified Australian Rules via school programs will not necessarily translate into meaningful support for the code.”
True enough. But that’s for the AFL to worry about – not politicians!
Friday’s Age quotes Andrew Demetriou as saying that the AFL would pay scant attention to the Senate finding that there were “cultural barriers…that appear to be insurmountable”, and fair enough, too.
Honestly, for a group of Australian politicians to suggest that a section of the Australian population will never, ever take to the great Australian game … it makes me want to suggest that they are better off getting back to investigating something useful, like gene patents.
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