Labor tactics nothing new

OPPOSITION leader Bill Shorten’s attempt to portray himself as a man for the future has been crippled by his endorsement of Labor’s reversion to the use of discredited disruptive parliamentary tactics. The former AWU boss who entered federal parliament just seven years ago is blindly following a bad script which dismally failed Labor under former leaders Kim Beazley, Mark Latham and Kevin Rudd. It calls for Labor to be as unruly as possible during parliamentary sittings in the sure knowledge that most in the press gallery will have little or no institutional memory of previous use of the strategy and will be distracted by the theatrical shouting and posturing. Even those with very poor powers of recall should recollect former Independent Rob Oakeshott’s ludicrous September, 2010, claim that to a new parliamentary era and a new way to conduct parliament after he took 17 days to make what he called a “juicy sexy decision” with fellow turncoat Tony Windsor to support Julia Gillard’s minority government. No doubt Oakeshott was minded to hope for greater decency after watching Labor’s attempts to distract the Howard government from its mission of restoring the nation’s fortunes and rebuilding lost confidence, as well as bringing unchecked illegal immigration under control. Like every other recent Labor Opposition leader, Shorten expresses dismay at the state of the parliament but permits his team to run amok. In February, 2002, Simon Crean talked up the prospect of “getting order back in the place” but at least he was smiling as he did so, having previously admitted to being “part of the problem”. He was however, he said, “prepared to turn over a new leaf” but nothing changed. Four years later, then Health Minister and Leader of the House Tony Abbott said “ Labor's parliamentary rancour is the result partly of 10 years in opposition and partly continued inability to accept the legitimacy of the Howard Government”. He was moved to comment after then Opposition health spokesman Julia Gillard had been ejected from parliament for using the unparliamentary term “snivelling grub”, an expression Abbott had himself used. “The difference between her behaviour and mine was that she defied the chair and I did not,” he said. It was Gillard, too, who showed her contempt for proprietaries with the appointment of Peter Slipper to the Speaker’s chair in November, 2011, to secure an extra vote for her dysfunctional government. When his lurid and explicit text messages about female genitalia were revealed a year later, Gillard, the archetypical feminist, defended her appointee from then Opposition leader Abbott’s calls for removal saying she would not be lectured by “this man” about sexism and misogyny. Labor voted down the motion to remove the sexist Speaker 69-70 and not a single member of the handbag hit squad of Emily’s Listers crossed the floor to condemn Slipper’s behaviour and nor did any of the Mummy Bloggers who Gillard entertained at Kirribili House take to the antisocial media with their outrage. That they saved for Abbott who was making a stand against sexist behaviour. Taking its lead from the shrill former Labor prime minister and her contrived outrage, Shorten and his team have been in noisy defiance mode ever since the Abbott government came to office and Speaker Bronwyn Bishop took the chair. The extraordinary manner in which many Labor MPs have flouted her authority reached a crescendo Thursday when Tony Burke, the manager of Opposition business in the House, rose to confront Bishop with an unspontaneous motion of no confidence. While such a motion had not been moved since 1949, it was not that different the confrontation between the Labor Opposition and Speaker David Hawker in October, 2006, when Anthony Albanese complained that it was undemocratic to “apply one set of rules to Labor and another to the Government”. In the two years since his appointment, Hawker had issued 500 warnings against Labor MPs and only 52 to Liberal MPs. Albanese, who accounted for 46 of the warnings, said: “Anyone who watches Parliament knows that both sides robustly debate but only one side is penalised.” Abbott responded: “any fair-minded observer would conclude that the Labor Party creates 90 per cent of the disruption.” That was then it could have been now. Labor is still playing the same card. It is confused and contradictory. Burke, summing up Labor’s lost week, whined on Friday: “We didn’t ask Tony Abbott to define himself by knighthoods and damehoods (sic).” Whether four Australians get to call themselves knights or dames is of almost no consequence to an English-speaking people with laws and parliamentary procedures firmly grounded in centuries of significant British history. It may be a distressing for a few who will always be anguished when individuals are rewarded for singular achievement but not for the many who laud accomplishment but are really more interested in issues which will directly affect their lives. Putting the title distraction aside, the Coalition did go to the election promising to bring the Budget back under control, stop illegal boat arrivals, repeal the mining and carbon taxes, and overhaul the anti-free speech provisions in the anti-discrimination laws. It won a clear mandate to carry out its program – all the Labor Party is doing is thwarting the will of the people with its ridiculous time-wasting tactics.