A day in the houses of parliament

Today we returned to Parliament House in central Canberra where both the House of Representatives and Senate were meeting to discuss the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

We arrived a little late, after a long story involving a number of buses into Canberra, but we will still allowed to go in and headed straight into the House of Representatives, the chamber in which Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd sits.

In this room, everything was green, even the jackets of the workers who attended the ministers bringing them water and papers throughout the session. However, what surprised us, or certainly me anyway, was how empty the chamber was. There was obviously the speaker (replaced half way through with his deputy) and then a few government officials documenting procedures, but other than that there was no more than 2-3 ministers in the room at any one time. Ministers arrived, said their piece, and then left. Of the ministers that did stay longer, they did not really appear to be listening and seemed to be having private conversations amongst themselves, at one point a couple of ministers having their own conversation started laughing out loud. It was really quite bizarre.

The House of representatives had already passed the ETS and were actually discussing an amendment to a law outlining the shortage of Australian doctors and resultant employing of overseas doctors. It was quite interesting at first, but I found it a little repetitive after a bit. Many ministers were simply saying the same things, pointing out the same points. I suppose that comes with not listening to each other!!

After a bit, we moved across to the Senate chamber, (a red room) who were actually discussing ETS. This had slightly more ministers in attendance but not many, and there were ministers walking in and out as they felt like. One thing which tickled me was when a minister stood up to speak, standing with his foot perched on the bench. It was like nothing I’ve seen on the tv!

All in all it was pretty interesting although we couldn’t hack it until the end of the session. Tomorrow we will be Sydney bound as it is our last day in Australia before we fly out to Christchurch on Wednesday.