Canberra Reporting

There are some silly buggers going on in Canberra this week.

Firstly, there’s the NBN. With the Bill for the structural separation of Telstra hitting the Senate this week, the government is playing silly buggers on who’ll they’ll let get a briefing on the business case.

The government demanded Greens Senator Scott Ludlam and other interested parties provide signature on a confidentiality agreement that would have prevented him discussing its content of the business plan for seven years.

Then they reduced it to four years. Then a couple of years. And then, two weeks.

Good way to maintain credibility.

Speaking of credibility, the Liberal SA Senator, Mary Jo Fisher rose in Parliament last week to get stuck into the government on this issue, declaring that the NBN stood for ‘no-body knows’. Never mind.

Ahh, the major parties. Which is what the end of this week will be all about. And presents.

Speaking of presents of the Christmas variety, Swan spent the weekend under the mistletoe with Credit Unions, which is strange for someone who says they’re promoting competition.

And with the view of the long summer of sport ahead, another big issues for this week is the anti-siphoning legislation. I’ve ranted about this in this space before, and nothing has really changed.

What’s absolutely bullshit is that the free to air networks can have all the sport they like, not use it, and then run scare campaigns that ‘we’re going to lose more sport to pay TV’.

The Greens have bought the FTA networks Kool-aid on this one, arguing that they’re protecting Australian’s rights to watch sport on TV. But what about holding the networks to play what we’ve already got?

Wisely, the other parties are staying out of this one.

And thankfully, after this weekend, there will be no more defacing posters in the inner city, no more fighting for prime positions outside shops and train stations and no more ridiculous pamphlets about a vote for blah is a vote for someone else.

It’s actually still too close to call. But you have to wonder if a party can’t get over 35 per cent primary vote, do they deserve to be the government?

The other issue you can expect to dominate the week is asylum seekers with another protest breaking out in a detention centre. The government’s inability to try and walk both sides of the street on this issue means they’ve achieved nothing except to continue to waste away their already diminishing credibility.

Scott Morrison isn’t going to sew his lips together and if this crap continues, expect the government’s primary vote to resemble something from NSW.