Interested in ensuring a Balance of Power for The Greens?
The important thing to remember is that the Balance of Power in the Senate will only come if the Liberals/National Party and the Australian Labor Party disagree - and the Senators voted in to-day will not take office until 1 July 2011. So if there is a hung Parliament in the House of Representatives, the status quo -- with Steve Fielding still in place - will prevail in the Senate until 30 June 2011.
While many people claim to long for a bipartisanship of yesteryear, I would remind Networkers that there is bipartisanship - a very unpalatable bipartisanship - between the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal and National Parties:
- The Intervention
- Giving taxpayer funding to wealthy private schools and dragging the chain on public school funding
- Funding school chaplains which, in the main, are Christian. Where is the secular public space in schools?
- Keeping troops in Afghanistan
These are just a few.
In the House of Representatives, there will be no Balance of Power unless there is a hung Parliament. There are already three independents who have Liberal/National Party backgrounds in the Reps and there is no reason to think that they will not be re-elected.
They claim that, in the event of a hung Parliament, they will meet to decide whom they will support. Unless big, big deals are done my bet is that they will support the Liberal/National Party coalition. But time will tell. They just might approve of the Stimulus Package impact (as the Liberal and National Parties don't) and Labor might be able to give the recognition these independents will want for rural and regional Australia.
And, if Adam Bandt, is elected into a hung Parliament - which is a distinct possibility - then this will be another card to be dealt. I think it is clear that Bandt would support a Labor Government.
So, Networkers, if you are voting for a perceived Balance of Power to-day, please think carefully. It is a phrase easily cast about - but not always given much thought.
From Twitter:
RichardDiNatale
Handing out at Errol St Primary School Nth Melb next to Lindsay Tanner. Just wished him all the best for his retirement.
Senator Bob Brown with the two Victorian Greens likely to get elected to-day:
Richard di Natale (lead Senate Candidate) and Adam Bandt (Melbourne).
From Twitter:
RichardDiNatale Handing out at Errol St Primary School Nth Melb next to Lindsay Tanner. Just wished him all the best for his retirement.
If you had secular chaplains, would you have to find another name for them? Is a secular chaplain a contradiction in terms?
ReplyDeleteRoss: the chaplain policy has been Christian oriented since the word go - in spite of protests from social workers who consider themselves to be just as well qualified if not more so. I am concerned at govt funding of religious personnel. I am not a secularist but I believe in a secular and neutral public space in our civil society and the chaplaincy stuff in public/state schools, in my view, breaches this. However, there are other things afoot which also do this. I posted a few days ago on this and here is what I said. You might like to ask - where does this religious support stop?
ReplyDeleteTaxpayer funding of school chaplains.
I have watched over the years (because I am a practising Christian) evangelical and pentecostal groups and churches burrow their way into the public school system. In one parish where I used to worship, we had a co-operative system across the denominations of funding such chaplains. I have no complaint - within certain restrictions - about this since voluntary access to Religious Instruction has become part of the public school landscape. However, secular schools have become battlegrounds for the hearts, minds, and spirits of our children. Public schools are no longer a guarantee of a secular space. We have Steiner Schools set up right alongside and in the same grounds as public schools facilities; we have atheists drawing up an RI curriculum - well, not RI, it is philosophy-based ethics - and getting permission to go into the RI timeslot and teach it. Thought bubble! Would Marxists be as welcome if they sought entree? After all, Marx qualifies as a philosopher in University philosophy schools. Back to the chaplains, the churches and 'para' church groups such as Scripture Union burrowed away and represented their case to John Howard so well that he decided to fund them. Now, I am not sure how things work in schools with significant Muslim populations. Do they get their own imam or not? Can someone help me out here? And social workers put up their hands to point out their skills within an educational framework. Did any of them get funded under Howard's scheme? And then there is the take-over of Catholic schools by the Victorian Government which would still be separate Catholic Schools. Do we really want our public school sector to become a sectarian battleground? Do we want our taxes syphoned away from the public school sector to fund individual choices and aspirations which find public schools too, too much or too, too smelly or whatever?