No excuse for cancelling parliament amid pandemic

Parliament has sat sparingly since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Right now we were supposed to be approaching the end of the first week of a sitting fortnight. Instead, the Prime Minister cancelled this sitting period, without the slightest effort to find an alternative way to ensure parliamentary democracy marches on.

Instead, unaccountable executive government marches on, and that is a glass half full way of looking at things. The lack of transparency surrounding the way the government is handling this COVID crisis should concern all free citizens.

When will all MPs and senators return to Canberra? Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The national cabinet has replaced previously open and transparent meetings of Premiers with the PM. The chance for their bureaucratic experts to be part of the open dialogue is curtailed in the national cabinet process.

Instead, cabinet confidentiality rules apply, as they do for the deliberations of the COVID co-ordination committee: a selection of hand-picked individuals who advise the PM on how to open the economy back up.

Almost all of them are conflicted in their dealings if you look at their private sector interests. Their deliberative processes are secret. The agreement or dissent within the committee is also secret.

So at the same time our elected MPs and senators don’t meet, a group of unelected individuals meet in secret to offer supposedly arms length advice to the man who both picked them and pays them.

Not only is there no excuse for cancelling parliament in the modern world we live in (virtual parliaments are proceeding elsewhere), but there is no historical excuse either. Parliament sat during the 1919 pandemic, during the pandemics in the 1950s and during both world wars.

And given how significant the decisions being made by government are at the moment, the importance of the parliamentary processes to maintain accountability has rarely been greater.

The most concerning part about the death of parliamentary democracy isn’t that the executive and the PM are facilitating it. History tells us that is what leaders often attempt. The concerning aspect of the current situation is that citizens are so complacent about it. So willing to accept it. Indeed, supposed liberals within the Coalition aren’t expressing their open anger with what is happening.

Democracy is built on vigilance, not complacency.

Peter van Onselen is the Political Editor at Network 10 and a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University