Gordon Brown’s recent speech on immigration raises many issues, but so far as Australians are concerned, surely one of them must be “why the hell aren’t we a republic?”

The speech foreshadowed the closure of a range of skilled occuptations to non-EU citizens, as well as a tightening of regulations around student visas.

I’m not advocating policy changes on migration here (or not policy changes for the special benefit of Australians, anyway). And of course Australia’s own migration policy has moved a long way since the days of the 10-pound-Pom.

But shouldn’t our Constitutional arrangements – our Head of State – reflect this changed reality?

Britain has set its own foreign policy priority – and it’s Europe, not the Commonwealth. We aren’t abandoning the Mother Country. Mother’s moved on.

It’s nearly two years since the last election, when the Democrats lost all their seats, and over sixteen months since I finally left the Senate, as did the Democrats as a party. After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to get back into party politics and contest a seat at next year’s federal election. It was formally announced yesterday day that I’ll be running in the seat of Brisbane, which is where I live.

I’ve actually run in that seat once before, back in 1996. That was the election the Keating government got wiped out. Labor’s Arch Bevis, the incumbent in Brisbane at the time (as he still is), was 6.5% behind the Liberal candidate on primary votes, but at the end of the count he managed to get 559 votes in front, thanks to a very strong flow of preferences from Democrat and Green voters.

I had to weigh up a lot of things before deciding to dive back into party politics. There are aspects of politics that I could live without – some of which I’ve already been reminded of - and in the last year or so I’ve been enjoying engaging with a range of issues through a variety of different roles without having to worry about having a party label put on me.

But eventually I decided there are too many important and urgent issues that need to be addressed far more effectively than they currently are, and I felt I was in a position to help provide some of the extra political pressure to bring the necessary changes about.

Climate change is the most obvious and urgent matter. I can’t see any likelihood of either major party doing what is needed on climate change unless they feel it will cost them votes if they don’t. There are plenty of other issues that also need more attention between now and the next election.

Housing affordability remains a big and growing problem despite the recent economic downturn and tax reform will be on the agenda again and will need to be done right. It is also very important for Queensland to regain a voice in the federal Parliament from outside the major parties. This has been absent since the last election, when I lost my seat to Labor.

With the Democrats basically out of the picture as a viable party, the Greens are the only real political option available to push these issues and provide a different perspective. It is interesting being in a new environment and discovering what things work differently, although it feels a bit strange sometimes too, after having been in the Democrats for twenty years.

However, I know plenty of the people – there are quite a few former Democrats in the Greens – and it will be interesting to have a go at campaigning focused at a more local level than before.

The first time I ever ran as a candidate was in the Brisbane City Council elections in 1991. I stood as a Democrat, but it was also as part of a wider team of candidates who ran under the overall banner of the Green Alliance, with Drew Hutton as the Lord Mayoral candidate.

Around that time, talks were going on at a national level to explore the possibility of the Greens and the Democrats merging, rather than the Greens moving towards setting up their own national party. I was in favour of a merger happening, rather than having the two parties competing for the same seats.

However, for a whole bunch of reasons, it didn’t happen. All this time later, the Democrats have lost all their seats, but many of them didn’t go to the Greens, leaving Queensland without any minor party representation.

I believe diversity of views and perspectives in highly desirable in politics. However, it is sadly lacking at the moment. So assisting the Greens to get a Senate seat is important. Over the past couple of years, the Greens have been moving into the gap left by the Democrats in the Senate, and with Senate balance of power up for grabs at the next election, it is crucial than Queenslanders have a voice on balance of power issues. I think I can help make that happen, and provide an extra voice on some of the important issues, by running as a candidate.

The seat of Brisbane has changed a bit in the recent redistribution, losing some Labor areas and picking up some died in the wool Liberal suburbs. This has brought Labor’s margin down from 6.8% to 3.8%. This time around, the Liberal National Party candidate will be Teresa Gambaro, who was the Liberal member for the seat of Petrie from 1996 until the last election. There will be plenty of experience between the candidates for Labor, LNP and the Greens, which will hopefully make it a more interesting contest to follow.

Who knows, there might even be some genuine discussion of issues and policy solutions, rather than just an endless parade sound bites and sloganeering – all that’s probably being a bit too hopeful, even for an optimistic person like me.

This is an ugly political game, because the only way to go is down. It’s a race to the bottom.

I was in Pakistan during the children overboard episode, when the dog-whistle was given a good workout, and I interviewed Afghan refugees in Peshwar. They had suffered intense levels of grief and loss both in Afghanistan and during the years of limbo in Pakistan. But for most of them, the real dream was to return to Afghanistan – not Afghanistan as it was then, and sadly as it largely remains now, but a peaceful Afghanistan, with restored communities and hope.They were not talking about flat screen TVs in the Australian suburbs, but about gardens full of grapes and possible reunions with loved ones. That is not a dream that people give up lightly. And when they are finally driven to abandon it, our Prime Minister has no right to criminalise their decision.

Peshawar, where these interviews took place,  has been rocked by one bombing after another this year. Schools and colleges across Pakistan are closed for the rest of the week in the wake of the suicides bombing of the Islamic University in Islamabad. Afghanistan is still rent by war, and Pakistan is no refuge. Put down the dog-whistle. Now.

One of Howard’s core provisions was the excising of certain territories from Australia to prevent arrivals invoking Australian legal protections. While Rudd’s lot stopped sending the intercepted boat people to Nauru etc, they sent them to the excised territory of Christmas Island. The somewhat weak excuse was that there was a new expensive centre that needed to be used, despite the acknowledged heavy costs of running it and transporting people there.

This was obviously the ALP compromise version: we will be nicer to refugees, once their legitimacy is determined, but we will continue to look tough by sending them to an excised offshore island. However, this decision has now created an unnecessary problem because the facility has limited places and the numbers are becoming a political football of oversize proportions.

We have a major news story, moral panic and full blown political crisis because Christmas Island is about to overflow.

When 200 extra bunk beds make the media, there is a problem. Had the Government stopped sending the boat people to such a limited and visible facility, the extra numbers would have been a much smaller story. The fact that they continued this odd process reinforces the perception that there is a threat in the arrival of boat people that required both anxieties and high levels of spending.

We now have many years of settled boat arrivals, including those that arrived under Fraser and Hawke and NO evidence that they are in any way a threat to our social fabric. Yet Opposition politicians are still demonising the arrivals and creating a political panic and the Government has been caught in its own ambivalences. It should show some ethical courage by just bringing people to the mainland and processing them normally. Then people could just see them as just problematic arrivals who arrive inadequately documented.

I met some of the damaged people produced by the last Government’s policies and am appalled to see the start of another media feeding frenzy. Ruddock has learned nothing from the distress he caused, and the Opposition needs lessons in ethics v national and political self interest.

Please can we avoid the same mistakes again?

Queensland has caused grief for the ‘Coalition’ parties at national level before, and I suspect Malcolm Turnbull should be careful trying to publicly tell the Queensland party what to do, especially when in this state it is now a nominally National Party dominated hybrid.

I have to admit, I can’t really see what it is that had led so many of Mr Dutton’s colleagues and journalists from federal Parliament to describe him as someone of such talent and promise. However, I accept his party colleagues in the federal parliament have a far better opportunity to see all of Mr Dutton’s qualities than I do, so I will take them at their word.

But taking the personalities out of it, the main message I get from the whole episode is how pessimistic the Liberals and Nationals (and the Liberal Nationals) must be about their chances at the next election.

It is true that Mr Dutton’s former seat of Dickson has nominally become a Labor seat under the new draft boundaries released by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in their latest redistribution in Queensland.  However, given Mr Dutton only had a margin of 0.1% in his favour to start with, and it has only shifted to a nominally Labor margin of 1.3%, it was hardly a total upheaval for him.

And whilst the AEC usually only makes minimal changes between their draft boundaries and the final version when they do redistributions, it seems excessively defeatist for an incumbent to bail out before things are even finalised, given the overall shift is only 1.4%.  Incumbency is clearly worth something, and whilst Mr Dutton lost almost all of his margin at 2007 poll, it seems defeatist to assume he’s likely to go backwards again.

The now Labor held seat of Longman, which adjoins Dickson, has had the Labor margin cut from 3.6% to 1.3% which is the same as the new Dickson margin. Whilst Longman has a Labor incumbent, large chunks of the redistributed seat will be new to the electorate and the incumbent would not have had much time to work them.  Longman was previously held by Mal Brough, someone who was also labelled by many in the media and his party as a rising star but had the biggest swing against a sitting Liberal MP in the entire country last election. Whilst this might suggest Longman isn’t fertile ground, one could also say that it’s swung about as far as it’s likely to go, especially as the outer urban areas such as those covered by Longman (and much of Dickson it has to be said) are the sort of demographic who are the most likely to be pissed off by what the Bligh Labor government has been doing at state level in recent months.

In any case, while I can understand why Peter Dutton would have wanted to run for the now vacant seat McPherson (with a nominal margin on the new draft boundaries of around 8.6% for the LNP), the newly created seat of Wright, which adjoins McPherson, has a nominal margin to the LNP of 3.8% which surely isn’t too bad for a rising star like Mr Dutton in a seat with no incumbent.

Not only does Peter Dutton apparently feel his incumbency will not be enough to make up a 1.3% margin, it seems he wasn’t even comfortable with going for a new seat at a 3.8% margin to the Liberals.  If I was Malcolm Turnbull, I’d be feeling slightly insulted by that. There hardly seems much point in a party talking about the need for renewal and having high quality candidates who can offer things in the future if they’re just going to stick them in seats the party will always win anyway.

ELSEWHERE:

• Graham Young, a former party Vice President and Campaign Director for the Liberals in Qld, gives his assessment on Ambit Gambit.

It is always dangerous to single individuals out, but Jack Evans and Sid Spindler, alongside Don Chipp, were amongst the most crucial people in getting the Democrats established and functional.  Sadly all three have now passed on. Certainly when it comes to Western Australia, there is no other person who played a more fundamental role in the Democrats in that state, from the frantic early days, slowly building the party to a significant political force, in some very difficult days rebuilding the party in the west after some major infighting in the early 1990s – with the party ultimately reaching its strongest ever point in 1998 – and again in the even harder, distressing period where the party was struggling unsuccessfully for parliamentary and political survival.

Jack Evans not only hosted the huge town hall meeting in Perth in 1977 when Don Chipp was barnstorming the country setting up what to date has been the most successful minor party in Australian political history. He was a strong promoter of a ‘centre-line’ party and served as National President and in a number of other positions in those early years of the Democrats when the new party had lots of momentum and many wildy diverse and fervent members, but very little money or political experience. 

Jack Evans only served in the Senate for a single, shortened term, from March 1983 to June 1985.  There is a lot of hard, unglamorous work involved in party politics, and Jack was over represented in that category, but there is also a lot of luck, and he drew some short straws in that department. 

Jack Evans has a few distinctions in electoral history, some of which I’m sure he would have preferred not to have.  He gained the highest Democrat vote in Western Australia in the party’s entire history, at the Democrats’ very first effort in 1997.  With Jack Evans at the head of the ticket, the party gained around 12.6% of the vote.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to get him elected. Meanwhile over in NSW, his Democrat colleague Colin Mason was comfortably elected despite the party only getting around 8.3% of the vote. 

For those interested in political trivia and minutiae, the number 2 candidate following Jack Evans on the Democrat ticket way back in 1977 was Uri Themal, who later went on to head the Queensland government’s Multicultural Affairs department. The number 3 candidate was Olympic gold medal sprinter Shirley Strickland-de la Hunty, who ran as a support candidate for Jack and the Democrats a number of times through into the 1990s. Jack and Shirley know each other from their teenage years, and he spoke at her funeral in Perth in 2004)

Jack recontested for the Senate in 1980, and while the primary vote was much lower at 8.8%, after all the votes were counted and preferences distributed, he came much closer to getting elected – agonisingly so, missing out on the final seat by less than 1000 votes out of around 700 000 votes cast. That final seat went instead to the Liberal’s Noel Crichton-Browne, starting him out on a Senate career which would stretch for another 16 years. 

To rub salt into the wound, the Liberals had advertised in TV, radio and newspapers, as well as through direct mail, with false assertions that a vote for the Democrats was a vote for Labor, along with other alleged inaccuracies about the Democrats’ voting record in the Senate.  Given the final result was so close, it is not unreasonable to assume that these falsehoods may have had sufficient influence to make a difference.

This led to Jack achieving another unwanted political milestone, as the key appellant in a High Court challenge – Evans v Crichton-Browne – to that result.  I believe it was the first test of the provision of the Electoral Act which makes it an illegal practice to be:

“Printing, publishing, or distributing any electoral advertisement, notice, handbill, pamphlet, or card containing any untrue or incorrect statement intended or likely to mislead or improperly interfere with any elector in or in relation to the casting of his vote.”

The High Court found that this provision related only to misleading electors regarding the actual act of voting – i.e. how to fill in the ballot paper or which ballot box to put in it – not in regard to influencing them in deciding who to vote for, so Jack and the WA Democrats lost out again. 

It is not surprising that the Democrats strongly pushed for many years afterwards to get a prohibition against dishonest political advertising inserted into the Electoral Act.  These efforts to remove the ‘licence to lie’ at election time were actually briefly successful – for a short time after the election of the Hawke Labor government, amendments to this effect were passed by the Senate and inserted in the Electoral Act.  However, the two major parties decided to remove them once again before the next election could be held, so they were never used in practice.

Jack was finally successful in getting elected in March 1983. Ironically, the Democrat Senate vote was lower still, at just 6.8%, but the fact it was a double dissolution election, with a lower quota required for election, made the difference. 

However, the downside of being elected in a double dissolution was that firstly Jack only got a three year term instead of the usual six years, and secondly that the start of his term was back-dated to July 1982.  On top of that, the Hawke government, elected in March 1983, called an early election on 1 December 1984.  This time, the Democrat vote was seriously hampered by the brief shooting star of the Nuclear Disarmament Party. The Democrat vote in WA was just 4.8%, while the NDP’s lead candidate, Jo Vallentine, was elected on 6.8% after having been drawn at the top of the ballot paper – well below the level Jack had achieved in 1977 and 1980 without getting elected. 

As another sign of the vagaries of Senate elections for smaller parties, over in NSW the NDP’s rock star candidate Peter Garrett, who had helped generate so much of the momentum for that new party, failed to win a seat despite getting 9.6% of the vote, while the Democrats’ Colin Mason once again managed to get elected, despite polling lower at 7.2%.

If there was one area the ‘consider each issue on its merits’ Democrats had been unyieldingly dogmatic about since their formation, it was the anti-nuclear, pro-disarmanent message, so the splintering of that vote by the NDP,and especially the loss of a seat to them, caused a degree of teeth-gnashing at the time.

When the 1987 election came around, Jack Evans came second in a tightly contested pre-selection ballot within the Democrats.  Jean Jenkins, the lead candidate got elected – in another double dissolution election – with 5.8% of the vote.  Jo Vallentine – recontesting as an Independent, as the NDP has already imploded by this stage – was also re-elected with 4.8% of the vote – the same percentage the unsuccessful Jack Evans led Democrat ticket achieved in the previous election.

Such are the vagaries of Senate polls for smaller parties. The key message isn’t so much a series of hard luck stories, but rather a stark reminder for minor parties that unless they can gain enough support to get a quota in their own right, they will always be subject to the vagaries of preference flows.

But even though Jack had only a short time in the Senate – the second shortest of the 26 people who served as Senators in the Democrats’ history – he still made his mark in that time.  Perhaps most notably, he introduced one of only twelve Private Senators’ Bills (i.e. non-government legislation) to be passed into law in the nearly 109 years since federal Parliament was founded, and one of only two Democrats (along with former Victorian Senator Janet Powell) to be a sole sponsor of such a Bill.  His Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No 2) 1984 was aimed at preventing a particular type of tax evasion.

The topic of tax evasion legislation was very vexed for the Democrat Senators of this period – the first term of the Hawke government. A shared strong aversion to tax evasion at times ran into conflict with a strong opposition to retrospective legislation.  Democrat Senators Chipp, Haines and Macklin tended to go towards only supporting non-retrospective aspects of legislation which clamped down on tax avoidance, while Jack Evans and Colin Mason leaned towards supporting closing tax avoidance loopholes regardless. 

Unlike the later tax troubles the Democrats ran afoul of with the GST legislation in 1999, this much more drawn our public difference of opinion amongst their Senators did not split the party or its supporter base.  Perhaps this was because the positions various Senators took were always openly and honestly explained, and were consistent with their public policies and principles previously pronounced.

In his first speech to the Senatein 1983, Jack Evans highlighted issues that he pursued in the all too brief period he served in that chamber.  Apart from the traditional Democrat emphasis on inclusiveness and the search for constructive cooperation ahead of combative confrontationalism, he strongly promoted the importance of supporting education at all levels as an investment for the future. 

He gave specific mention not just to the need to stop the Franklin Dam, but also to protect precious areas of Western Australia such as the jarrah and karri forests and Cockburn Sound.  While his mention of the women of Greenham Common may seem a bit dated, his emphasis on the importance of nuclear disarmament is as current as ever, as was his mention of the importance of a Bill of rights and individual responsibilities.

He expressed support for cultural diversity as well as economic diversity, with a display of traditional liberal support for individual enterprise, social supports and a reduction in constraints on fair economic competition.

Following the 1987 election, after Jack Evans had been defeated in pre-selection and Jean Jenkins had been elected to the Senate from WA, he moved into the background witin the party for a number of years.  However, Jenkins’ seat was lost at the 1990 election and she was unsuccessful again at the 1993 poll, with the WA Greens (which by that time had formed around Senator Jo Vallentine prior to her retirement in 1991) then holding 2 Senate seats. 

Around this period, a series of infighting broke out in the Democrats in WA which involved the most extraordinary, labyrinthian set of circumstances I’ve ever witnessed.  It reached the stage of one group of members taking another group to court to determine which people were the ‘real’ executive of the WA Division.  It would take far too long to outline the twisting disputes here – and if I started to try, it would probably attract a furious flurry of comments from a few people who are still determined to have their version history recognised, long after everyone else has forgotten the whole affair happened. 

This period ended with a mass expulsion from the party of the major protagonists from both sides of the stoush – plus others who I have to say were basically caught up as collateral damage.  In addition, some other people from outside the party tried to ensure the dispute dragged on in one way or another through the courts for a number of years after – and without raising the names of anyone from outside the Democrats who might already have been mentioned in this piece, suffice to say that there were some disconcerting similarities with efforts made some years later by other people using sizeable amounts of money to pursue court action to derail Pauline Hanson and her party.

In any case, with most of the active members of the WA Democrats either expelled or repelled by the whole saga, Jack Evans came back in to help rebuild the party in WA almost from scratch.  Within a few years, the WA Democrats not only had a Senator elected once again in 1996, with Andrew Murray gaining 9.4%, but in 1998 for the first time ever gained a second WA Senator, with the election of Brian Greig from 6.4% of the vote.

In between those two elections, for the only time in the party’s history they also succeeded in getting people elected to the Upper House of the State Parliament.  The election of Helen Hodgson and Norm Kelly at the state election in late 1997 not only gave the WA branch of the party it’s only ever taste of state success. That election was also historic because, in combination with the election of three candidates from the WA Greens, it broke the conservative’s hold on the WA Upper House for the first time in the state’s history.  The consequences of that were historic, not least because it – eventually – led to the removal of (most of) the disgraceful enormous malapportionment in favour of rural voters which had existed for so long in WA.

Sadly, both of these state seats were lost at the next WA state election in  February 2001- a result which also played a key part in the party’s members across the country moving to generate a ballot of the federal leadership, leading to Meg Lees being replaced by Natasha Stott Despoja less than two months later.

At the 2001 federal election, the Stott Despoja led Democrats – with Jack Evans serving once again as National Campaign Director, as he had in the earliest days of the party – provided the only occasion where the Democrats retained a Senate seat in WA, with Andrew Murray being re-elected on 5.8% of the vote.

I never heard Jack mention it, but if I was him I would have found it interesting to note that results of 12.6% in 1977 and 8.8% in 1980 when he was lead Senate candidate weren’t enough to get a successful outcome, whilst Democrat votes of 5.8% in 1987, 6.4% in 1998 and 5.8% in 2001 were sufficient to be successful.  There a range of reasons why this is so, not least a slightly lower quota after 1984 and the emergence of the NDP/Greens in WA cutting into the Democrat base vote whilst providing strong preference flows if the Democrats could stay above them in the count. 

Despite age and health starting to catch up with him, Jack one again played key roles in the 2007 election for the party in its efforts to stave off parliamentary annihilation.  It must have been a terrible thing for him to witness the final eradication of the party from the national parliament, after thirty years of effort and sacrifice.

I don’t pretend I had no disagreements with Jack now and then over the years, but I could never fault his commitment or his tenacity.  And while he was determined, he wasn’t dogmatic or inflexible. 

It probably sounds shallow, but I also have to say I was terribly envious of his voice, which was rich, deep and resonant – the sort of naturally authoritative and projecting voice which any politician would die for.

In the final paragraphs of the final speech made by a Democrat in the federal Parliament, I mentioned Jack Evans; wondering what might have been if he had had the chance to contribute over a longer period of time in the Senate.   But politics, like life, is full of ‘what ifs’. The most we can do is try our hardest to improve things for the better, and I have no doubt Jack achieved that.

In reading back through a piece I wrote about Don Chipp’s funeralthree years ago, I saw a comment I heard at the time from Paul Keating. He was talking about Chipp, but I think it is fair to give it some application to Jack Evans too, when he said Don Chipp “successfully achieved one of the most difficult things possible in Australian politics – starting a new political party.”

The fact that the party’s time may now have ended doesn’t in any way diminish its achievements over the thirty years when it reshaped the political landscape in Australia, especially when it comes to the Senate.  It doesn’t just leave a historical artifact or curiosity; it leaves an ongoing legacy that impacts on all that follow.

I know the 30 or so years of the Democrats’ history only played one part in the 80 year long life of Jack Evans. I focus on that because I don’t know enough about the rest of his life to comment, but on that score alone, it’s a very good effort.

Evans has well and truly stood out amongst Officers of Parliaments in Australia as being willing to publicly speak out when he sees government action which he believes compromises the integrity of the Parliament.

But it seems he might now have a competitor in the form of Neil Laurie, the Clerk of the only legislative chamber in Queensland’s Parliament.

Mr Laurie has reportedly provided a submission to the Queensland Government’s integrity review which is scathing of past and current practices at parliamentary and government level in Queensland.

Not only does the Clerk of Queensland’s Parliament reportedly suggest that the current political culture in Queensland is in some respects worse than in the pre-Fitzgerald era, he also calls for significant electoral reform – including the introduction of some form of proportional representation in the state’s electoral system.  Not even Harry Evans advocated for introducing proportional representation!

While there is no way in the world either major party in Queensland will currently support proportional representation and multi-member electorates for state Parliament, it is interesting that the Clerk of the Queensland Parliament has highlighted this point.

I sometimes think the biggest lost opportunity of the post-Fitzgerald era in Queensland was the failure of the Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC) to recommend proportional representation for Queensland – especially given the lack of an Upper House – when they were tasked with reviewing the state’s electoral system soon after the election of the Goss Labor government in 1989.

However, EARC didn’t recommend this (in fact they even recommended maintaining a small degree of favouritism for rural areas when the boundaries and size of electorates were being considered.

Perhaps if the Clerk of the day had been a champion of the idea, as seems to be the case with the current Clerk, there might have been a chance of introducing this significant and positive reform.

Debates around Telstra sometimes seem to have their own special form of internal logic, where people argue and apply principles and positions that they would not do in other circumstances.

The government’s plan for Telstra appears to basically be requiring a form of divestiture – a measure which is often suggested, but rarely able to be acted on, when a player or players excessively dominate a particular industry.

Many have highlighted the lack of adequate divestiture provisions in our Trade Practices Act, which would complement existing prohibitions on acquisitions which substantially reduce competition in a particular sector.  Former Democrat Senator Andrew Murray was one who regularly called for such a reform.

There are circumstances unique to Telstra which make such action possible in this case, and even then it requires at least the threat of specific legislation to bring it about.

Coles and Woolworths domination of – and increasing vertical integration within – the retail sector is a commonly mentioned example of unhealthy and anti-competitive concentration of market power, but there is currently little that can be done about it under our existing competition laws.

It would be nice if the debate surrounding the federal government’s plans for Telstra moved beyond the peculiarities of Telstra’s situation and history, and gave stronger consideration to the merits of adopting stronger divestiture provisions in Australia, such as those which currently apply in the USA or Europe.

Judging from what I’ve read, it seems I am more open than most in thinking there is a credible possibility that the Prime Minister might call an early double dissolution election – assuming the political environment at the time suits it (and assuming he gets a trigger).  A chance to strengthen their Lower House majority while immediately reducing the difficulty in getting measures through the Senate would be tempting.

However, the latest speculation that the government is considering recalling the Senate on or after December 10th so they can get a double dissolution trigger from a second rejection of the private health insurance legislation is ludicrous.  It is hard to believe anyone would treat this story as credible.

Firstly, they would have to get the Senate to agree to the extra sittings, which is highly doubtful. Secondly, it is unlikely the redistribution in New South Wales would have concluded by then, which would mean some unnecessarily messy issues surrounding pre-selections and interim boundaries.

And thirdly, whilst I think the government could call a double dissolution election if the circumstances were right, it is inconceivable that this could ever involve calling an election in December, which would run through Christmas and New Year; or anytime in January while the school holidays were still on.

Given Parliament normally resumes early in February, there is no reason why the government couldn’t wait until then, and put the private health insurance legislation up for debate first. An early election would only work for the government if they were able to convince the electorate it was justified. This could be possible in some circumstances, but not in a situation where the government takes unprecedented steps in an effort to speed up the process.

However, Queensland Senator Joe Ludwig, who took on the Special Minister of State role, appears to be doing a good job of continuing with positive, sensible changes in this area.

In response to issues identified through the Auditor-General’s inquiry into the printing allowances of parliamentarians, Senator Ludwig has announced a number of worthwhile, immediate changes, namely:

• a further 25% cut to the current printing entitlement, from $100,000 to $75,000 per annum for Members and $16,667 to $12,500 for Senators (this is in addition to the 33% cut by the Rudd Government when elected to office);
• ending the use of printing entitlements for electioneering such as printing how to vote cards;
• capping, for the first time, expenditure by MPs on office consumables such as toner and paper;
• combining the current printing and communications allowance entitlements into a single entitlement;
• establishing a rigorous vetting and checking system within the Department of Finance to ensure the material Members and Senators print is within entitlement;
• reforming the current newspapers and periodicals allowance; and
• expanding the current reporting system to publish all expenditure of Senators, Members, former Parliamentarians, family members and employees, of entitlements administered by the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

Contrary to some of the impressions being given about the Auditor-General’s report, while it did identify major problems with the current system of allowances, it didn’t find widespread rorting.  This isn’t to say that there was no misuse identified. The Auditor-General also found problems with the way the entitlements framework was administered.

But in my view, the major problem – also identified by the Auditor-General – is that the framework around the printing entitlement is complex, outdated and imprecise. The very fact that the Auditor-General stated that many usages that were examined were “at risk of being outside entitlement” indicates the ambiguity inherent in the current guidelines.  I know a couple of my previous usages of the printing allowance that the Auditor-General scrutinised came within this category.

I can recall my own experiences in trying to get clear advice about what was and wasn’t within entitlement. In particular, the very gray line between printing for ‘parliamentary or electoral activities’ (which is allowed) and ‘political party activities’ (which isn’t allowed) created a lot of uncertainty, given that a lot of an MP’s party activities are inherently intertwined with what they do in Parliament or their electorate.  Making this vagueness even more problematic is that some formal advices were provided saying that things like using the allowance to print how-to-cards was permitted, even though many would see this usage as something that was party political. The government’s decision to formally define “electioneering” for the first time, and tightly restrict the use of printing entitlements for this purpose is a major step forward. Apart from preventing possible misue, it will also slightly level the electoral playing field by at least preventing the incumbent from being able to have the taxpayer fund a big chunk of their electoral materials.

In some cases, trying to get clarity about what was and wasn’t within entitlement was a bit like getting legal advice – you get an opinion of might be allowed, but no guarantee that someone else won’t make a determination to the contrary down the track.  A ‘rule of thumb’ advice that was sometimes provided was ‘not to do anything that would look bad on the front page of the newspaper.’  Given that newspapers are quite capable of making politicians look bad just for existing, that advice isn’t always of much help.

Whilst the main focus on the changes announced to date will probably be on the reductions in the size of the overall printing and communication budgets, perhaps one of the most worthwhile changes is the capping of expenditure – at $35 000 annually – on the previously unlimited entitlement for things such as paper and toner for office printers and photocopiers.

This is one example where technology had made the existing open ended allowance in this area a bigger problem.  When I first started working as a politician’s staffer in 1990, we were only just moving from dot matrix printers to laser printers and the photocopiers of the time would repeatedly break down if you tried to use them for big copying jobs.

These days, computers can print direct to photocopiers which are basically mini printing-presses that can churn out enormous quantities very quickly.  Combined with a lack of clear guidelines about what things you can or can’t use photocopiers for, having an open-ended entitlement in this area was bound to become a bigger and bigger problem.

Apart from the reforms already announced, Senator Ludwig has also set up a four person panel to provide advice on how to further improve the system.  The only slight criticism I have of this measure is that I think this panel should have a former politician or two on it, because they are most likely to have an idea of all the many potential usages and ambiguities that can occur in this area as part of politicians carrying out their job.  (I’m not saying this by way of looking for a job, I hasten to add. If I was approached to do something like this in a formal way, I’d have to say no).

I hope that the four person panel not only consults politicians (current or former) as part of their task, but also seeks the views of the general public, including the media.  Whilst some people would no doubt say politicians shouldn’t have any allowances or entitlements at all, I think it would be helpful to get some considered views from across the community about how best to frame and define what should or shouldn’t be appropriate uses of printing allowances.

UPDATE: There were some speeches made in the Senate this week about the issues raised in the Auditor-General’s report. They’re worth reading to get an idea of some of the political reactions and context.  The speeches can be accessed through this link.