End of an era

Today is the last sit­ting day of the Senate, and because our Senate changes over mid-year, no matter when the Sen­at­ors were elec­ted, those Sen­at­ors whose terms are up finish today and the newly elec­ted lot start next week. We put half the Senate up for renewal at a time. This time, though, some­thing inter­est­ing is happening.

Today is the last day we’ll have sit­ting Demo­crats in the upper house, at least until next elec­tion. There were no new Demo­crat Sen­at­ors elec­ted this time. This is a party whose motto is “keep the bas­tards honest”. This is a party that really, truly is a demo­cratic party: all decisions are made by ballot to all mem­bers of the party, not just the politi­cians. They’ve held the bal­ance of power for a long time, first by them­selves and more recently in tenu­ous dance with the Greens. Instead, the bal­ance of power now goes to a Family First (read Chris­tian Right) Sen­ator and a South Aus­tralian anti-gambling campaigner.

crazyjane13 said a lot of what I wanted to say, but not all of it.

We’re losing Sen­ator Nata­sha Stott-Despoja. I thought she was fant­astic. When she was elec­ted leader of the Demo­crats, I hon­estly thought I was look­ing at our first female Prime Min­is­ter. I told her that at the Reclaim The Night March in Sydney the Octo­ber after she was elected.

She was feisty. She was our age – she was the young­est woman ever elec­ted to Par­lia­ment. It was 1995 – she was 26, I was 24. She wore docs to Par­lia­ment. She made me think it was actu­ally pos­sible to change the world through an elect­oral pro­cess. She was smart and sassy and I really thought she had it in her to go the whole way. I never entirely under­stood what happened around her resig­na­tion from the lead­er­ship. I hated that back­bit­ing and infight­ing had tain­ted this pre­vi­ously won­der­ful party.

And in its place rose the Greens. And with it Sen­ator Kerry Nettle. And it’s her last day today too. Kerry Nettle was, if pos­sible, more amaz­ing than Stott-Despoja. She got up at protest rally after protest rally and said the things that needed to be said. She said things that no other politi­cian seemed will­ing to say. She was a beacon for refugee rights and human rights. She was as grass-roots as it got. Hell, she friended me on Face­book – me and a mil­lion others, I’m sure.

There’s good news in this: July 1st will see the day that the right-wing Coali­tion party no longer has the major­ity in the gov­ern­ment, and, with the help of those shifty folk men­tioned earlier, we might see some of those prom­ising bills passed; Sen­ator Bob Brown is still in there, which means bills of his that have been kick­ing around for a while, like the Rights of the Ter­min­ally Ill Bill, aren’t just going to get knocked out; and Stott-Despoja hinted that this wasn’t her last gasp. I can’t wait to see where Nettle ends up.

But it def­in­itely feels like the end of an era. Sad that these two fab­ulous women can’t move on into the grand new world that seems to be coming with a Rudd gov­ern­ment and a Labor-Green Senate…