Passion in Parliament?
'Hysteria', 'controversy', 'career killing'. Hardly words you would associate with the dreary world of Australian politics. But as technology changes, and the corridors of Parliament echo with the voices of a very diverse Australia, it's hard not to feel sorry for our legislators.
The recent scrapping of the controversial Migration Bill amendment in the Senate, due to overwhelming criticism and party dissent, was a major embarassment for the Federal Government. This may have lead Prime Minister John Howard to announce a rare conscience vote on any bills concerning Embryonic Stem Cell Research.
This means Liberal Party members are free to vote according to their conscience, without suffering backlash for voting against the party majority. But why is this so rare? Just how democratic is our democracy? And are our politicians making the tough choices we charge them to?
According to Professor David Black, an expert in Politics and History, free votes used to be standard practice rather than the exception.
"In the 1980s the Labor Party developed the strategy that the most effective way to achieve political success was to be united and disciplined and hence....the other parties followed suit."
The Australian Democrats have a unique clause written into their constitution, allowing them to vote how they see fit. Queensland Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett famously called for a conscience vote on Australia's involvement in the Iraq War back in 2002.
Senator Bartlett believes free votes force politicians to research and carefully think about the choices they are making, as opposed to just following the mob.
"It's a real poisoning of the political system in Australia that there is massive pressure, almost hysteria, anytime there's any suggestion of anyone voting separately from their party. This then stems across into general excessive negativity about people having different opinions within a party. Which one would like to think is what democracy is all about," Senator Bartlett said.
"Particularly noticeable was the RU486 debate. It changed the whole character of the debate, not just because it was a free vote but the consequence was that people had to be able to justify how they'd vote and that meant they had to find out more about the issue and they had to be able to take a position that they felt they could defend."
Queensland MP Cate Molloy was disendorsed and consequently resigned from the Labor Party after disagreeing with a proposed dam in her electorate of Noosa that her community strongly opposed. Senator Bartlett found this disturbing, as he believed she was simply representing her electorate,
"You have to have some commonality of view amongst the party but to enforce it so ruthlessly and rigidly is I think anti-democratic," he said.
Professor Black says that he doesn't think that the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Bill is likely to go very far.
"The Prime Minister is not very keen, and because there's no Government Bill the probability is that in the end it won't go as far as some people would like, but that's only a guess."
However, it now appears almost certain that we can expect upcoming conscience votes on the right to refuse treatment as a form of euthanasia.
