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A bastion against democracy? : Comments
By Sylvia Marchant, published 16/2/2010The Australian Senate is a mystery to many citizens. Not many have a clear idea of its role, activities or membership.
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Here's a thing to illustrate my point. At your next Quiz Night, ask the people to name all their State's current Senators. I bet few will get more than two or three. On the two occasions I've had that question asked at a Quiz Night down here in Tasmania, the most common answer was Senators Bob Brown, Eric Abetz and Brian Harradine (who hasn't been a Senator for years). Only one table got three names correct - they got Senator Milne as well. Which begs the question, if nobody has heard of the other nine, what on earth do they do ? Well, they hang around the party machine and suck up to the handful of party loyalists on the preselection panel to ensure they get a good spot on the ticket at the next election. Providing they get that, they don't have to do anything as crass as talk to (or listen to) ordinary people.
The Senate's a good idea in theory. But, given the system that elects them, there's a lot of truth in Paul Keating's description of the Senate as "unrepresentative swill". In practice, most Senators don't represent us and certainly don't represent their State - they represent the party that has the say in whether they get a winnable spot on the ticket next time around.