Canberra Report – Doddcasting

The big news out of Canberra this week, as the Parliament sits back down, is that there is going to be a great debate on the war in Afghanistan.

After dissing foreign affairs as something Kevvie07 did to stay out of Canberra, now we’re getting in Paul McDermott and Andrew Denton as a part of the “great debate” of the new paradigm.

Who will be affirmative and who on the negative? Who knows – both the major parties are pretty much the same on this issue.

I guess there are a couple of things to say here – better late than never is the first. The Greens, who came up with the entire idea of the debate in the first place, have been largely sidelined by the Committee process, which will sit this week over Senate processes. So, it’s about as significant as the old debates on whether sex or laughing is better.

The third thing commentators seem to be saying is that there’s a fair chance debates such as this will occur before Australians are deployed to future wars. I doubt that they will ever be something that holds Australia back from conflicts, but we’ll see.

Will this debate see Australia question the value and role we play in the US alliance? Probably not. Will it consider the role of China compared to the US in terms of their currency wars – probably not. That wars making T-shirts cheap!

The other major policy discussion of the week will likely be around the white rage in the bush and the backdown of the government from its report – calling an inquiry into the report’s impacts – as though they only thought there might be a few issues after people starting burning the report.

How can people say that the bush is wasting water when they keep starting fires with the reports? How can the government put these fires out without wasting more water?

The dollar is floating around parity, we have a new patron saint for people who are really made – with Mary of the Cross now competing with Mary of Tasmania for the title of “Our Mary”.

This week there’s lots of non controversial legislation, but there will be in coming weeks, and there’s a fair bit that will impact clients:

• Introducing new legislation to pull the ABCC within the Office of Fair Work and creating the Fair Work Inspectorate
• The egg industry demanding a increase on the levy for laying chickens from 10 to 30 cents per laying chicken.
• Implementation of the Commonwealth co-managed fisheries
• Introducing legislation to separate and strengthen the Court of Military Justice
• Establishing a stand alone sexual discrimination and harassment Commissioner
• Strengthen the Education Services for Overseas Student Act to better protect international students and expanding the jurisidiction of the Ombudsman to include all RTOs
• There’s also the implementation of a new statutory authority to oversee VET with the responsibility and powers for registration and audit of all RTOs
• Political donations legislation

And the biggest news of the week? Parliamentary Karaoke competition featuring none other than the First Bloke Tim Matherson.