Cross bench starting make demands of Tony Abbott’s government

THE cross bench in the Senate has realised its power and is starting to demand some ‘interesting’ things. The problem for Australians is the Government is listening.

Waterloo Wind Farm in South Australia.

THE cross bench in the Senate has realised its power and is starting to roar. The problem for voters is the Government is listening.

The clutch of independents with minimalist primary votes and huge ambitions want attention to the mishmash of offbeat ideas and prejudices they hold dear.

And if Tony Abbott and his ministers want their support to overcome the combined Labor/Greens bloc, they will have to take some of them seriously. And it’s already happening.

Here are a few of the causes the senators are championing and want action on:

WIND FARMS: Senator John Madigan wants an ombudsman to deal with the complaints against wind farms by those who live nearby. He says he’s not obsessed by the issue, it’s just he doesn’t believe the 25 scientific inquiries which have found the turbines are not health hazards. Prime Minister Abbott, who calls them ugly and noisy, is considering the appointment of a wind farm commissioner. He has not considered a similar appointment to deal with the many more complaints about coal seam gas.

DEATH PENALTY: The Government has just put at risk relations with Indonesia over the execution of two Australians convicted ten 10 years for drug smuggling. The nation has made its opposition to capital punishment clear. Which doesn’t bother Jacqui Lambie who wants the death penalty reintroduced in Australia. It should be for “those Islamic terrorists found guilty of treason and have killed during their attacks on Australian soil”.

Senator Jacqui Lambie in Question Time in the Senate Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra.pic by Kym Smith

CHINESE DEMOCRACY: Dio Wang, the only surviving PUP senator, has emerged as a fan of the brutal 1989 crackdown on dissidents in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. “Based on the information I have, I think the government did the right thing. Obviously when criminals and

students get mixed up, you can’t really identify each one of them,” he said in an interview, while acknowledging “you may get innocent casualties”. His endorsement of the killing remains singular in Parliament.

MORE GUNS: Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm supports same sex marriage. And he wants people to take their firearms to the weddings to help celebrate. After the Lindt Cafe tragedy he urged laws changed to allow Australians to tote more weaponry. “What happened in that cafe would have been most unlikely to have occurred in Florida, Texas, or Vermont, or Alaska in America, or perhaps even Switzerland as well” because “statistically speaking” some of the abducted customers would have been armed. Nobody in Parliament thinks this is a good idea.

GO NUCLEAR: South Australia’s Bob Day is another senator who thinks wind power is dangerous because of what he calls the “harrowing” effects on humans and animals. But he thinks atomic energy is a better proposition and wants Adelaide to build nuclear subs. “One of the major obstacles to Australia considering nuclear submarines has been the absence of a domestic nuclear industry,” fretted the man who considered turbines a threat.