This hung Parliament thing is going to be 'fun'. The ALP have basically promised to return the favour from the 2010 Hung Parliament where they won't grant a 'pair'. Naturally, the Coalition is unhappy about it.
In 2011, the Coalition threatened to not grant a pair to controversial Labor backbencher Craig Thomson when his wife was due to give birth during heated debate on the Labor government's carbon pricing legislation.
"I think that a party, whose principles around looking after people in the workplace ... it's a really sad day when they say if someone's having a baby they're not going to allow them a pair, if someone's sick they're not going to allow them a pair," he said.
"I don't think it was ever as savage as that [during the 43rd Parliament when Julia Gillard was prime minister]. If they ever say that someone, by reason of infirmity, is not going to be allowed a pair then that doesn't say much about a party that prides itself on looking after the worker."Yes, yes it was. It's like these people have neither memory nor conscience! At the time, Tony Abbott took a no-holds-barred approach to his running of the Opposition and only grudgingly gave a pair for Michelle Rowland. Yes, this extract is from those ugly days:
Mr Entsch says he refused the pair on the basis there was no sense of urgency.
He has now issued a statement saying if Ms Rowland's "child is sick then she should leave the Parliament immediately and a pair will be granted".
Speaking to The World Today, Mr Entsch said he granted Ms Rowland leave when he read about the matter in this morning's paper, but labelled her leave request "a stunt".
"The issue of backbench pairs was raised with me first at a meeting I had with the new chief Government whip on Monday," he said.
"Included in that was a request for Mike Kelly. He sought a pairing for a family medical matter, and I said to him at that time, send it over to me but there's not a lot of detail there, I'll need more than that to be able to approve it.
"There was also a request there from Michelle Rowland where she said due to her child being unwell that she'd be grateful if she could return home on Thursday night.
"My comment to Chris [Hayes] at the time was that if the child is unwell, she shouldn't be down here, she should be with her child.
"It seems rather bizarre to be putting in a request on Monday or Tuesday asking for a leave on Thursday night because a child is unwell.
"If it's unwell now, she should be with it.
"No other information was available to me and on the basis of that I said look, I can't approve it on the basis of the information that's been provided to me.
If it had been me and it had been my sick child, I would have been sitting with my sick child. I wouldn't have been spending a week in the Parliament.
"Now later on [Mr Hayes] came back to me and he said to me that Mike Kelly's wife was sick. She'd been in hospital for a couple of weeks and he needed to sit with her. On that basis I changed my position and approved that.
"At no point from that discussion until I read about it in the paper on Thursday morning had there been any further discussion to me or my office in regards to Michelle Rowland.
"If it had been me and it had been my sick child, I would have been sitting with my sick child. I wouldn't have been spending a week in the Parliament.
Classy!
Anyway. Joyce thinks that was wrong, and so two wrongs won't make a right. The answer to that is you should've thought of that before you let the precedent cat loose. Once you set a precedent, it's really hard to get the precedent cat back into the bag, so to speak.
He said Mr Abbott and manager of opposition business Christopher Pyne were wrong to take the hardline approach against Ms Rowland.
"If those decisions were made, then I think those decisions were also wrong ... and so I don't think two wrongs are ever going to make a right."
Mr Joyce said the government should be "realistic and decent" in operating the Parliament.
Speaking on ABC radio, Ms O'Dwyer said the dispute was a demonstration of unnecessary partisanship.
"It would be turning about 50 years of convention on its head," she said.
"Frankly I think the Australian people are very sick of party political games.
"We want more women in the Parliament, we want people who have got parental responsibilities putting their hand up for Parliament.
"For Labor to turn around and say, where you've got family emergences you are not going to be able to leave ... I think they need to explain why they've made that decision," she said.*Ugh*. Spew.
The rank hypocrisy of these people. Really, if Ms O'Dwyer thinks 50years of convention means something now, she be well advised she certainly didn't behave that way back in 2013, because that was her and her party turning 47years of convention on its he'd when it suited them for absolutely short term political gain. Now that the shoe is on the other foot and it's about to be firmly lodged in their butt cracks, Joyce is asking for realism and decency. If he wants realism, he can recant his stupid climate change denials and if he wants decency he can argue in favour of doing something about Manus and Nauru detention centres.
For crying out loud...
It's Gold, Gold, Gold! (As The ABS Shoots Own Goal)
Pleiades sent me a Bernard Keane article, and in it is a little discussion about Olympic funding:
And more than a third of voters think we spend too much money on Olympic sports: 36% of voters say we spend too much money — with little difference between voters of different parties — while just 11% say we don’t spend enough; 34% say we spend about enough. Fifty-one per cent of voters say it’s very important or quite important that we win gold medals in Rio; 43% say it’s not important. Greens voters are the most underwhelmed by gold medals — just 29% say it’s important, compared to 63% of Liberal voters. Men — 56% — are more likely to think gold medals are important than women (47%), while older voters are less inclined to view them as important than younger voters. But there are fewer differences between people on overall interest in the Olympics — 19% say they have a lot of interest (21% men, 16% women) and 17% say no interest — although Coalition voters are the least likely to say they have no interest, and women are more likely than men — 20% to 15%.
I mean, we're just grumpy on the Left, okay? If we weren't grumpy, we probably won't be on the Left.
Worth Flying For
Victorian Police are looking to fly to the Vatican to interview Cardinal Pell over allegations that he was a pederast too.
In a statement, Victoria Police confirmed it has received advice from the Department of Public Prosecutions in relation to allegations of historical sexual assaults committed in Ballarat East between 1976 and 1980, and East Melbourne between 1996 and 2001.
"We have received advice from the DPP and will now take the time to consider it," A Victoria Police spokeswoman said.
I say go ahead, make our day. Pell spent years being the ornery conservative wowser making people's lives a misery. He should be served a bit of his own medicine.
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