Bartlett's Blog

Contention over Queensland's  Wild Rivers legislation has been bubbling along for quite a while now. Unfortunately, as with many issues which become polarised, each "side" is focused on defending their position, which has meant that some important underlying issues are not getting the attention they deserve. I've just had a piece on this topic published at The Drum on the ABC's website.  It's fairly long, so they published it ...

I mentioned in this post about appearing before a Senate Committee hearing  as patr of their inquiry into the welfare of international students.  That Committee tabled its report in the Senate in the final sitting days of the year.  Almost all the attention at the time was on the legislation dealing with climate change, and the related leadership tension in the Liberal Party, so the report got fairly limited ...

I had the slightly curious but none the less worthwhile experience a couple of weeks ago of providing evidence to a public hearing a Senate Committee inquiry, sitting on the opposite side of the table from where I’d been so many times since 1997. The inquiry is into issues surrounding international students.  While a lot of the media coverage has focused on violence towards some students in some southern ...

Racing Victoria meets tomorrow (Wednesday 13 May) to decide whether or not to finally follow every other state (except South Australia) in banning jumps racing. (UPDATE - decision postponed until "later in the week") Nearly a year ago, I said such a ban was well overdue. Instead, there was another review, followed by more ‘improvements’, followed by more horse deaths.  At the time I mentioned there had been two ...

The Senate Committee report into the sexualisation of children was tabled last week. It doesn’t seem to have pleased some of the children’s advocacy groups, or Family First for that matter. Clive Hamilton, who has campaigned on the issue for some time, is also pretty peeved, if his piece in Crikey is anything to go by – although I have to say I found his ‘pretend advertising industry memo’ a ...

The Senate Committee report into my legislation on a compensation system for the Stolen Generations was tabled yesterday. The Committee didn't directly support a national system of compensation, but did put forward some other useful recommendations. You can read my additional comments at this link. The Daily Telegraph has invited me to 'debate' people and answers questions live through their website at 9am tomorrow (Wednesday). You can ask a ...

I've written a few earlier posts about the Senate Inquiry into Housing Affordability that was set up earlier this year. The Committee brought down its report yesterday – you can access it by clicking here. Whilst both I and the Greens' Senator Rachel Siewert added some additional comments, the report has 32 recommendations which had the unanimous support of Liberal and Labor Senators. I think it's a very good ...

As I mentioned in my preceding post, I've been at Committee hearings in Sydney and Darwin this week examining two proposed pieces of legislation – one to provide compensation to members of the Stolen Generations, and one which seeks to restore euthanasia laws in the Northern Territory. Being private Senators Bills (that is, not from the government), neither of these Bills are very likely to pass in the ...

I'm in Darwin at the moment for Committee hearings into two separate private Senators' Bills. One, introduced by Bob Brown, is aimed at restoring the right of the Northern Territory Parliament to legislate in areas relating to euthanasia. The other was introduced by me and is aimed at instituting a national system for providing compensation to the Stolen Generations. Unfortunately, being in Darwin means I had to miss ...

I was in Karratha, Western Australia today with the Senate Committee inquiring into housing affordability. I hadn't been to this town before, although I have previously been to Port Hedland, which is 'just up the road' (about 240 kilometres)

I’ve been at public hearings over the last three days for the Senate Committee inquiry into Housing Affordability. I won’t give running commentaries on all the evidence presented here. Anyone wanting to engage in some online discussion on some policy specifics might want to visit Possum Pollytics, which has a few posts on the topic. One of those pointed to a recent easy to read and fairly short speech on ...

Public hearings for the Senate Inquiry into housing affordability got underway in Canberra today. The Inquiry is due to report by June 16.  The first day of hearings included evidence from people such as the newly expanded Housing section in the Department of Families, the Master Builders' Association, the Planning Institute, the Urban Development Institute, Housing Industry Association, NATSEM, and Treasury. Submissions and the transcripts of hearings can be ...

The federal Parliament is now on a seven week break, and doesn’t sit again until May 13th, the day the Rudd government brings down its first Budget. In the case of the Senate, this will be just the eleventh sitting day for the year. However, there is a lot of work in the Senate that happens outside of sitting days, not least through Senate Committee inquiries. After spending most ...

I wrote a post back in 2006 about some of the concerns surrounding what is perceived to be the growing sexualisation in the portrayal of children in advertising and elsewhere in the media.  The issue has now been sent to the Senate’s Environment, Communications and the Arts Committee for an inquiry, which is due to report by 23 June, 2008. I’m Deputy Chair of this Committee, but I’m also involved ...

The Liberal government has used its control of the Senate to force two Committees to hold just single day hearings tomorrow (Friday) into (1) the entire pack of legislation relating the Northern Territory Aboriginal intervention and other welfare quarantining measures, and (2) the Water Bill, implementing the government's contentious Murray-Darling Basin measures. In both cases, the legislation being examined was only introduced into Parliament this week. Some of the ...

Late last year, the federal Senate handed down its findings from an inquiry into the stolen wages issue. But the report's long-overdue completion sparked the sort of political response you might expect from a Senate inquiry into navel lint. Rural and remote Queensland could not have developed without Aboriginal labour, frequently acknowledged as more skilled and reliable that white workers. Every dimension of this labour was controlled by the ...

Senate Estimates have provided many opportunities for Senators to try to establish the cost and nature of taxpayer funded advertising across a range of departments, finding that "the total media spend on current Government ads is $111 million." However, the big focus is still on the (not)Workchoices advertising campaign. This is partly because it is very expensive, and partly because it is clearly aimed as much ...

I'm in Canberra this week for Estimates Committee hearings, which are always held soon after the Budget. You can read a short briefing paper on the Senate Estimates process at this link (from which the graphic at the bottom of this post is taken). As the Budget has become used more as an opportunity for the government to reframe political debate and perceptions, becoming just one ...

I’ve lived all my life in south-east Queensland, and it’s fair to say that sometimes Queenslanders can be very parochial. We grab onto all sorts of things to try to show how Queenslanders are special, especially if it makes us look better than the ‘southerners’. Parochialism isn’t unique to Queensland of course, but we can certainly lay it on thick sometimes. But occasionally I have to wonder ...

A week or so ago the government announced changes to our workplace laws. It did so with great fanfare and at great cost to the taxpayer through widespread advertising of their new policy. Today in the Senate we discovered that the government is so enamoured with their new changes that they are trying to ensure there is minimal opportunity for the rest of the community to check out the ...