OPINION: Let's stop paying pollies for this crap

OPINION: If I carried on with half the rubbish our pollies did I'd be looking for a new job, so why aren't they?

SHAMBLES: Senate business on September 12 was horribly attended. Get used to seeing more farcical behaviour. Picture: MICK TSIKAS

FARCICAL.

It's the only way to describe scenes in the Senate this week.

Senators addressing empty or very near-empty rooms, waffling on, our own Coast-based Senator James McGrath left to discuss television shows, others chose seeds.

Why?

They had no work to do.

Why?

Because no legislation was progressing through the House of Representatives.

Whether through inept governance or shrewd but albeit cynical Opposition tactics in stalling the progress of legislation, we have a debacle on our hands.

How is it that these publicly elected figures getting plump on our purse can simply do nothing?

What happens when we have no work to do?

We're probably finding ourselves out of a job and staring down the barrel of unemployment.

To be surplus to requirements can be a death knell for your pay cheque.

So why weren't these Senators sent to do something valuable with their time while waiting for legislation to progress for debate?

I couldn't care less what the strategy was. Whether to show the Coalition up for being unable to govern or the LNP looking to out the Opposition as nothing more than political game players toying with a nation, either way, I honestly don't care.

Why didn't the Senators go to a local youth centre and mentor disinterested or at-risk youths?

Why didn't they jump in and man the phones at Centrelink or Veterans' Affairs?

Hell, they may have been able to progress someone's welfare or pension application.

Can you imagine?

Rather than giving 24 million people a tremendous slap in the face, our elected leaders, people who were, at some point, just like you and I, remembered exactly where they came from, who they represented and used their time to do some good.

Yeah, I can't imagine it either.

They may have breached rules and regulations and probably would've been scorned by plenty for neglecting their duties, but I sure as hell didn't elect people to filibuster and take pot shots while pocketing my hard-earned.

Seriously, when did it come to this? These two parties are literally having a laugh on our money.

Does anyone actually care about the future of the country or the good of the people, or are these people that determined to play ducks and drakes with each other until someone ends up knifed and someone else stumbles over the line with yet another wafer-thin mandate?

The level of disdain the voting public are being treated with at the moment is almost unprecedented.

Worse still, it won't change because not enough of us care.

We should demand so much more of these people.

Originally published as OPINION: Let's stop paying pollies for this crap