James Joyce’s son gives his first speech
Australia’s highest profile Senator – and my fellow Queenslander – Barnaby Joyce makes his First Speech to the Senate this afternoon, around about 5.40pm. After the blanket media coverage he’s received, including many personal profiles, I’m not sure what new and unexpected things he can say, but no doubt there will be a lot of people listening. I’ll certainly be there.
There will also be two other First Speeches coming today. Russell Trood, the Queensland Liberal who together with Senator Joyce delivered control of the Senate to the Coalition, but has a rather lower profile, will also be speaking, followed by Glenn Sterle, a Labor Senator from WA who took the place of former Hawke Minister Peter Cook.
Senator Trood has been a lecturer and associate professor at Griffith University in Brisbane for most of the last 17 years, so he has a fair bit of experience in what univeristies are like in the modern era. I’d be interested in what he thinks of the government’s current obsession with preventing universities from charging services fees for students, although his specialty is international affairs, so I suspect the policy aspects of his speech will be mainly about that.
The speechfest starts from 5pm and will be broadcast on the Parliamentary News Network. If you can’t get the broadcast, you can see the Senate proceedings on the web – go to http://www.aph.gov.au/live/webcast3.asp (assuming your modem connection is good enough). There’s six more First Speeches to come tomorrow and Thursday, including the other new National Party Senator, Fiona Nash, who has a lower profile than Barnaby but seems to also be capable of independent thought.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Vee
Fiona Nash is the other Senator I’m interested in.
Fielding, Joyce and Nash.
I’ll be downloading the Hansard tomorrow to see what Joyce had to say.
Yes Joyce’s Telstra deal is better assuming the govt doesn’t use the fund for something else which it could, whether its this govt or the next. And yes I read that on someone else’s blog but can’t remember whose.
As far as I’m concerned http://www.tsa.org.au/members/pdf/revisiting_telstra.pdf
is the only close to acceptable solution. That is Barnaby got it wrong.
Aug 16th, 2005
Jim Steel
In a twist of logic that only politics (or perhaps the military) could manage, mac users can apparently get to the video by using the “text version”.
Aug 16th, 2005