Nearly six months later, on May 15 this year, the terms of reference for that inquiry were released by the Minister and Bill Shorten, the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities.

After a further three months, the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Migration has now announced the formal launching of the inquiry, with basically the same terms of reference as previously released.

It’s taken a while to get underway, but the inquiry has the potential to devise some worthwhile reforms to our migration law and processes. This issue is an easy one to raise populist concerns about individual cases.  However, it is far from easy to define criteria which will consistently and fairly balance the competing issues involved.

Which makes it a good one for a Parliamentary Committee to inquire into, as it should produce richer and deeper details about the impacts and administration of the current rules, the costs to individuals, families and governments and – hopefully – a better and fairer law at the end of all.

The Committee is receiving public submissions until the 28th of October.

The most consistent criticism of the government’s CPRS has focused on the free permits for polluting industries and the inadequate emission reduction targets.  To me, this reinforces the core problem with the political debate on climate change, which is that it is somehow trying to pretend that we can seriously reduce emissions without very much change to our own lifestyles and the structure of our economy.  Sure, cleaner energy production and other technological changes will be crucial, but the simple fact is we will also need to significantly change the way we live.  That is something most people don’t want to hear, and if there is one thing politicians tend to be very good at, it’s avoiding telling people things they don’t want to hear.

This was demonstrated again recently with some publicity regarding some research commissioned by the Australian Farm Institute.  Agriculture is currently exempt from the government’s CPRS, but the report raised concerns that once farmers are required to buy emissions trading permits, there will be a big impact on the viability of beef, sheep and dairy products.

Given the very high greenhouse emissions from livestock farming, one would have thought it was self-evident that products produced from livestock would get more expensive once a price was put on these emissions.  It’s sort of the whole point of carbon pricing – to make high emission activities more expensive so people will choose lower emission options.  But such a notion was greeted with horror in media reports and the suggestion that this outcome must be avoided.

Federal Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, is on record saying that “any push to reduce (livestock) emissions needs to happen without reducing production.”  This is rather like saying ‘any change needs to be done in a way which ensures no changes occur’.

The same seems to be applying to the way the federal government is approaching the setting up of their CPRS.  Put a price carbon, but then compensate the industries that are affected so they can keep operating as close to business as usual for as long as possible.

We might be able to afford such luxuries if such a scheme had been set up when concerns about climate change were first raised in federal parliament twenty years ago. But we are now close to approaching the point of no return on climate change, and we can no longer kid ourselves that we can avoid it without significantly changing our own lifestyles and economy or trying to just shift the burden to people from poorer countries.

While at least one of the Senate Committee inquiries will no doubt find plenty to criticise about the federal government’s climate policy, I wonder how much focus it will put on the need to convince the public we will all need to wear the costs of significant change.

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.

Senator Xenophon’s pokies Bill – formally called the ATMs and Cash Facilities in Licensed Venues Bill 2008, is currently being examined by the Senate Community Affairs Committee, chaired by Queensland Senator Claire Moore, who has a reputation as a fair and even-handed Chair. 

Senator Fielding from Family First has also introduced the Poker Machine Harm Minimisation Bill 2008 and the Poker Machine Harm Reduction Tax (Administration) Bill 2008, both of which appeared after Senator Xenophon had been elected but before he was sworn in to his place in the Senate.

All three Bills are currently being examined together by the Senate Committee as part of the one inquiry.  Submissions received thus far are available here and here. There have been two public hearings so far, with a third later this week.

It is due to report on November 10, so the position of the various parties will be clearer at that time. I believe the Green’s are likely to be supportive of the intent of the legislation, assuming there are no technical issues with the drafting or implementation of it. I am less sure what position the major parties are likely to take.

As all these Bills are non-government ones (usually called Private Senators’ Bills), it means that while there may be some debate on them in the Senate, there will not be a formal vote on any or all of them without the agreement of the major parties. Even if any of them were to pass the Senate, it would still require the government’s support for it to be debated and passed by the House of Representatives.

The success rate for private Senators Bills is not very high, with only eleven passing into law since 1901.  However, the fact that the two Senators behind these pokies Bills are also the two pivotal balance of power Senators certainly increases their chances of success.

In any case, this low number does not include other Bills which, while not passing in their own right, were adopted in some way or other by the government in their own legislation, or inserted in a similar form via amendments to a government Bill.  This is what happened, for example, with the legislation which stopped the damming of the Franklin River. The Democrats’ World Heritage Properties Protection Bill 1982 , introduced by NSW Senator Colin Mason, was passed by the Senate with the support of then Labor Opposition, but was stalled in the House of Reps by the then Fraser government. But when the Hawke government was elected a few months later, it reintroduced similar legislation with the same intent, which was able to save the Franklin (after the legislation narrowly survived a High Court appeal, through a 4-3 judgement).

There’s no doubt there is major concern amongst many community based welfare groups about the harm caused problem gamblers using poker machines and I expect that pressure will only continue to increase as the evidence of the extent of that harm grows. The Community Affairs Committee will be assessing whether these Bills are a workable and effective way of reducing that harm. It will be interesting to see the judgement/s of the Senators on the Committee on that topic and whether they put forward other ideas on how to address the issue.