Fishing for differences

Following on from my previous post on the conflicting message of a merged Liberal National Party in Queensland and a determinedly differentiating National Party at federal level, is another small but rather telling example.

The recently tabled Senate Committee report into legislation amending the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act contained a dissenting report from the Coalition Senators. No surprises there – Coalition Senators seem to be very keen of late to express their opposition to many parts of government legislation. There were six Coalition Senators who put their names at the end of this dissenting report, three of them Queenslanders, as befits a Bill dealing with the Reef. But what I did find curious is that of those three, Barnaby Joyce gave his party affiliation as “Nats, Qld”, while long-standing National Ron Boswell gave his party affiliation as “LNP, Qld”, and Queensland Liberal Senator Ian MacDonald (who has long advocated a combining of the Liberals and Nationals, although not necessarily in the manner that has recently occurred) described himself as “LP, Qld”. 

In most respects this is a minor matter, but it does reinforce the lack of clarity about whether the Liberals and Nationals from Queensland are wanting to bond together or be apart.  This is reinforced by Barnaby Joyce adding some separate additional comments under his own name, but “on behalf of the National Party”. No other names were listed on this additional comment, which leaves it unclear whether Ron Boswell, describing himself as an LNP Senator, is among those they were made on behalf of.

The additional comments don’t actually take a substantively different approach on the actual legislation, so it is unlikely to lead to any splits in voting on the Senate floor.  It seems to just be Senator Joyce taking an opportunity to engage in the ‘differentiation’ tactic he has often espoused. There’s nothing out of the ordinary in that – minor party Senators do it quite often.

In this case, Senator Joyce is mainly making an extra appeal to the fishing lobby with some statements that are more hairy-chested than those in the main dissenting report.

As an aside, I was interested to see him quoting the Queensland Game Fishing Association describing themselves as “an organisation committed to the collection, dissemination and analysis of scientific information as the basis of sound marine resource conservation and management”.  Maybe they should call it scientific fishing, rather than game fishing. A bit like scientific whaling.