After the election in November last year, few gave the Senate much thought. The change in the numbers following the half-Senate election looked of no consequence. NSW Democrat Vicki Bourne lost her seat to the Greens’ Kerry Nettle, otherwise the numbers stayed the same. The Coalition retained the 20 seats it had up for re-election; Labor retained its 13 seats; the Greens Bob Brown was re-elected. Independent Brian Harradine and One Nation Len Harris were not up for re-election this time.
One Green for a Democrat, so what. But events in the past week or so, show that there is a critical difference – especially with the numbers the way they are.
The Greens Bob Brown asserted that the environment was more important than keeping Telstra in private ownership. If the price was right, he would allow Telstra to be privatised – provided the money went to environmental projects that otherwise would not get done.
Senators have a fixed term beginning on July 1 after the election. So the new senators elected on November 10 take their seats on July 1. June 27 is the last sitting of this Senate and the new Senate assembles in August.
When it assemblies the numbers dynamic changes. The Government needs 39 votes of the 76 to get its legislation through. The Opposition needs 38 votes to stop legislation through (a tied vote is resolved in the negative; Australia’s history would have been radically different if it were the other way). The Government needs 38 votes to prevent the Senate from setting up any damaging inquiry.
The Government has 35 senators, so needs four more to pass or three more to block. Labor has 28 seats plus one independent pro-Labor senator, so it needs nine to block legislation. Before July 1 it means that Labor plus the nine Democrats can block legislation without needing the Green, independent or One Nation vote. After July 1, that is no longer the case. Labor and Democrats on their own cannot block legislation; they need one more senator, either Green, One Nation or independent.
Enter the Telstra issue.
If Brown led a less democratic party and could insist on his way, there would be an opening fro the Government. It could say to the Greens, to use the words of George Bernard Shaw – we have established what you are, now we are just negotiating the price. How many tree do you want for the privatisation of Telstra? In the Senate after July 31 the Coalition, plus Greens, Harradine and One Nation equals a legislative majority and Labor and the Democrats are irrelevant. Harradine has shown in the past that if his Tasmanian constituency gets sufficient advantage he will vote for Coalition legislation. Harris has said he would allow the privatisation of Telstra in some circumstances, so the possibility is there. At least until the Greens conference at the weekend at which various Greens lambasted Brown for having the temerity to put the environment before public ownership. Brown backed down, saying he had put his heart before his head.
So this time, the Senate numbers of All-the-Rest against Labor and the Democrats might not be exercised in favour of the privatisation of Telstra, but the possibility of that alignment remains for other issues. In short, the combination of Labor and Democrat senators will not be as decisively powerful as it has been. The Government might well be able to cajole, bribe or convince the Greens, Harradine and Harris to side in favour of its legislation.
The Telstra exercise, in addition to highlighting the changed dynamic of the Senate numbers, is a sharp reminder of the philosophical and political tensions within each party.
In the Coalition, the Nationals have held to their agrarian socialist roots. They like socialistic provision of government services and marketing of their goods, but want the joys of the open market when it comes to free trade and imports and a deregulated labour market for employed agricultural labor or getting the benefits of Australian-provided goods and services.
Within Labor, there remains the tension between the modernisers and those who want union strangleholds on enterprises, especially through public ownership.
Among the Greens, Telstra has been most telling. The Telstra issue, perhaps for the first time in Australia, has shown the huge rift between the conservationist view and the anti-globalisation neo-Trotskyists who have gravitated to the Greens after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Bob Brown is an old-style conservationist who sees the need to preserve the ecology of nation, its bio-diversity and sustainability. These aims are paramount and aside from the question of factors of production and private vs public ownership. Kerry Nettle and others in the Greens see the change or destruction of the corporatist-capitalist structure and the best or only way of achieving environmental sustainability. We may see more of this rift as time goes on.
Among Democrats, Telstra, like the GST, is defining. Bear in mind that the Democrats grew out of disgruntled Liberals. Founder Don Chipp believed in the individual’s right to chose and to act not only on the social front, but also on the economic front – so state ownership runs against the Democrats’ political heritage.
In that volatile environment, we should not assume that the Senate will be hostile to everything contentious that the Government puts up, especially as the Democrats – as a democratic conscience party — do not always vote as a block. Nor, come to that, should we expect the two Greens to always vote together. The last time there were two Greens in the Senate, they usually voted together, but not always.
Moreover, the Senate does more than pass or block government legislation. Through its committee system it is capable of setting up inquiries which can be quite embarrassing to the Government. To block those inquiries, the government will be in a slightly stronger position after July 1.