In the ongoing melee which News Corp and Nine Entertainment Co. wants to pick with the Labor Party, with regards bullying following the death of Senator Kitching, have correctly decided from a legal perspective that this is fair game because they know that legally it is impossible to defame the dead. A dead person can not speak for themselves and any accusation of bullying that News Corp and Nine Entertainment Co. they lay can not be disproven or falsified, for that very reason. If you are a trashbag media organisation which is morally bankrupt, then this is perfect. Meanwhile, even the act of defending itself is painted as cause non gratis by this pair of media hucksters.
In an election year (we are absolutely going to the polls on or before May 21; if only for the Senate election which must be held), splattering your political enemy in any kind of muck that you are able to throw at them, is a long standing tactic.
Perhaps the brightest beacon of sensibility in all this, is Senator Penny Wong. From the floor of the chamber and standing in front of the side of the chamber which is reasonably assumed to be the government but has decided that it is in fact the opposition, with all of the skill of a surgeon she shut down debate and extracted the cancer from the day's proceedings:
"I will not return anger with anger, or blame with blame."
- Senator Penny Wong, 28th Mar 2022.
The Constitution makes no mention of the Prime Minister. The role of the head of executive cabinet was already well known since about the time of William Pitt and by the time that the six colonies in Australia were all granted responsible government, they'd all assumed some kind of executive government with a Premier of some kind. Here's the thing though, at the time of the Federation of the six colonies into a Commonwealth, the idea of the Prime Minister (that is the head of executive cabinet) coming from either the House of Commons or the House of Lords had already established itself as normal practice. The suggestion that we don't have a Prime Minister who comes from the Senate because of unwritten convention, is only ever put forward by people with neither an understanding of political history nor the imagination to consider what could be and what is best for the country.
I would like to put forward that the best person for the job of the Prime Minister of Australia is Penny Wong and that she should do the job from the Senate.
Paul Keating famously derided the Senate as 'unrepresentative swill' and let's be honest, he was right. From the outset the Senate was always designed to be unrepresentative. Less people live in the Northern Territory than in my local government area and yet the Northern Territory is entitled to two Senators. Less people live in Tasmania than in western Sydney and yet Tasmania is entitled to twelve Senators.
On the face of it, this puts an absurd amount of power into the hands of Senators from less populous states. That is of course until you realise that if just the two states of New South Wales and Victoria could ever agree on anything, they could dictate the legislation for the rest of the nation forever, through sheer numbers on the floor of the House of Representatives.
With the twin features of proportional representation for the election of its members and the fact that the smaller states have a bigger voices, this means that almost by design, or at least by operation, the Senate has a wider selection of voices speaking into it. The Senate as the house of review, has a calmer culture and almost by design has to be more conciliatory.
Since the role of Prime Minister is to be both a minister of the Crown without portfolio as well as to be the public face of the executive cabinet, then I think that that almost demands a calmer and more sensible voice than merely someone who can command the numbers in an unruly caucus. Since the Liberal Government came to power in 2013 it has had a brawler who remained as de facto leader of the opposition even while Prime Minister, a sensible statesman who tried unsuccessfully to hold his own party together, and the current opportunist who having obtained the top job, has repeatedly demonstrated that he still has no idea what he wants to do with it but that he really really likes having the power.
I think that the role of the Prime Minister as it is currently imagined, tends to allow more brawlers and political pugilists than it otherwise would do, if the Prime Minister came from the Senate and not the House.
As a Senator, Penny Wong has spent the last 9 years on the Opposition's side in the upper house as it tries to negotiate, compromise, reconcile and review legislation before it gets assent and becomes law. The Opposition as it stands in the Senate, ultimately needs to cross the floor on occasion if it wants to get anything done. The most important thing about that, is that unlike the Opposition in the House, the Opposition as it is met in the Senate by the Government and actually gets a chance to talk to it, instead of meeting a barrage of knavery. There is little to no compromise by a Government which controls the numbers on the floor of the House but in the Senate where that is less likely, the chamber itself has a hand in shaping legislation.
Penny Wong has been shaped by the chamber which she has stood in. I think that her calmness and poise either would not have been developed or allowed to come out in the House of Representatives, in the way that it has done in the Senate.
On various select committees, both when reporting in the Senate itself and the Federation Chamber, Penny has had to put up with an abnormal amount of insult and abuse, in part because she is gay. The House is usually known for its raucous behaviour but the Senate with fewer members but being the same physical size of space, means that any abuse can be directly targeted. How she has dealt with insult, actual cat-calling and abuse, is to show obvious justified annoyance and anger at times but with a degree of control that puts other MPs to shame.
Part of the problem with positions of power is that there are invariably people who want the job who are ill-suited to do it. The best people who do responsible jobs are almost always those people who didn't ask for it but were noticed by someone else and then put forward to do it. That is the reason why Dwight Eisenhower is almost certainly the best President that the United States has had since FDR. Is certainly the reason why Angela Merkel was the best person for the job of Chancellor of Germany. I think that Penny Wong still has the idea that the section 51 charge that the parliament shall have the power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth, is in principle a good idea.
Anthony Albanese is fine as the Labor leader of the House of Representatives. He's going to get the job of Prime Minister almost by default because of the unwritten conventions which exist. I do not think that those conventions are necessarily sensible if it means that we don't get the best person for the job. Albo will do a fine job as Prime Minister but will he do the best job? I think that the person who would do the best job out of the 227 MPs which we are going to get, is Penny Wong and not Albo and the biggest reason why I think that this is the case, also happens to be the biggest reason why she won't get the job - she doesn't want it.
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