Post election review

For those of you who don't know yet, the Coalition is back for another three year term. With only a few seats left undecided, and already having a 26 seat majority, its a rather overwhelming result. It also looks as though they will have control of the senate as well. However, this is contingent on the Family First party supporting their movies. It means they will also be able to block anything that the Senate can do, for example, hold enquiries into things, like the children overboard incident. Even though I am a Liberal supporter, this makes me a little worried.

The upper house of parliament was not originally designed to help the government do its job, but rather keep a watch on it. It has an even distribution of representatives from each state. This is in contrast to the house of representatives, which has representatives based on the population. There is a representative for approximately every 50,000 voters. The reason for the senate is that legislation passed from the house of representatives that might disadvantage states with small populations could be stopped. It also had the power to conduct enquiries into actions the government has undertaken (or not undertaken). Basically, the senate is a safeguard so that we don't have another Russian despot take over the place.

The senate could still theoretically keep a very keen eye on what the government is doing, but since it is controlled by the party which also controls the house of representatives, almost anything could be let through. I say almost because it needs one more vote to have a majority. At the moment, the Coalition has 38 out of 76 seats in the senate, with their supporters (the family first party) holding another. Potentially, this situation could also give the Family First party a big say in many of the issues that the Coalition may raise. I'm not really sure what the preferance deals they did were, but its likely that they wouldn't honor these deals if the government decided to say... outlaw Christianity.

I've got a problem with the Family First party though. Throughout the whole campaign, they have not announced any policies nor have they expressed their opinions on anything. Basically, they've just stood around waving their posters on the side of the road. Somehow, they get a whole heap of publicity on the newspaper just few days before the election. The only political thing they've done is closely aligned themselves with the Liberal party by doing a whole heap of preference deals. What I want to know is, how did these guys, who just sprang out of nowhere onto the political landscape, get a seat in the senate? My guess is that since Family First is a church based party, which they don't really tout very much, heaps of Christians just vote because of that.

So what does a senate seat for the Family First party mean? In a nutshell, proposed new laws we have in this country in the next three have to undergo Christian scrutiny before they're passed. W00t.

I'm sure it happened all the time in the form of lobbying anyway, but now it seems very formal. For those of you who are Christians, thats a plus. I'm not sure if the full sale of Telstra is in the interests of Christianity (with a name like Ziggy, I wouldn't be suprised if the CEO is a demonic fiend attempting to get "fire to the home" hohoho), but I guess we'll see.

P.S. For those of you who don't get the joke, its based on Telstra's vision to bring "fibre to the home". I.e. Get every house in Australia connected up to optical fibre for broadband internet and telephony. Its heaps better than the copper we're currently using.