Answer the Question!

Looking back at my previous posts I seem to have been quite negative about the whole process, so today I decided to try and look at question time on the 18th September in a new light. This was quite unsuccessful however, as the first question brought the discussion straight back to another debate about interest and mortgage rates which I can’t say I was too thrilled to hear once again. And although I have come to have a better understanding of the issues due to my exciting new hobby of listening to question time via podcast, I can’t believe senators can sit through question time nearly every day and debate the same issues.

Today however, instead of just listening to the to and fro-ing of figures and the monotonous cry of... "liberals have kept interest rates lower than when labour was in government" I tried to cut through all the key messages and self promotion to really see how effective senators were at answering the questions posed to them. And as id thought, the first question and supplementary question provided no answers, merely the ramblings of Senator Scullion who tried unconvincingly to defend his contradictory statements made the day before that "interest rates today are the highest they’ve been under the Howard government" and in the same speech "that they are at record lows". And in response to the supplementary question about the broken promises of the liberal government about interest rates, (which is a favourite and almost permanent target for the labour party) he gave no defined answer, merely going off on a tangent about how proud he was "to be a member of a government that allowed people to be in a position to buy their own home".

Once again I came away frustrated with the whole process of question time as well as the ongoing competition between "us" and "them". Although I realise it is important for different groups to represent different view supposedly held by the people in Australia, I wish there could be some way they could lessen the huge competitive relationship they have between each other, because if makes question time very tedious and uncomfortable to listen to.