"Broken Record"

Question time today (13 August) felt a little bit repetitive. Once again a finance question about inflation and interest rate hikes started off the question time directed at Minister Minchin (I do not envy his position) who then set off on his promotion of the governments fantastic ability to keep "unemployment at record lows", "a very strong economy" and "inflation at an averaged 2.5% in contrast to labours 5.2%" – I am glad I only have to monitor Question Time for a few weeks as I feel financial debates and issues could get very boring!!

While I find Minchin to be very sarcastic in the way he answers the questions, I did find it interesting to hear how the minister answered questions and defended the governments actions in relations to climate change as I had to perform a similar task in a mock media conference. Once again he started off by deflecting the accusations that the government had done nothing to stop climate change in 11 years by insulting and criticising the "authoritarian labour machine" who disallow members to have their own views "for fear of being crushed… or expelled". While I feel this ongoing slandering to be pointless and irritating, he did pump through the key messages to promote the good the government is doing in relation to climate change, such as the "3.4 billion dollar program", the fact they are "committed to a carbon issues trading scheme" and as we highlighted in our mock media conference, the necessity to not rush into implementing such a scheme in order to ensure the safety of the economy. The promotion of these key messages was similar to our tactics and hence it was very beneficial and interesting to see how our media conference compared to the real thing.

As I said above in relation to Minchin’s answers, and whilst I know it is their job to defend their actions and campaigns, listening to the ongoing spiels from ministers about their campaigns does really highlight how talented the ministers are in pumping out their key messages throughout their answers. Every answer displayed the great skill the politicians have in conveying powerful, succinct key messages with ongoing references to the liberal’s governments great ability to keep interest rates down, consistent strong surpluses and paying off labour’s debt.

What also became apparent to me during this time, is the fact that the ministers do certainly seem to have a lot of fun during this time, giving each other cheek and taking up any chance to patronise the opposition. I found it very entertaining when Minchin directed his snide comments at Senator Ray and Senator Chapman who were repeatedly called to order when he came up to answer a question, saying "President you think they would have more respect seeing this is your last question time as president. Certainly we respect that fact and I would ask those opposite to respect that historic fact" – they certainly seem to enjoy the ability to make snide comments.

While I dislike opposing parties criticising each other during this time, the questions asked of members within the same party seem to add to the pointlessness of the procedures. The question posed by the Hon. Senator Patterson to fellow liberal member the Hon. Senator Coonan about the Governments actions to ensure the internet is safe for families seemed like a waste of time where Coonan was able to set off on her promotion of the new net alert program – important for the public to know this is going on, but seemingly pointless when other issues could have been discussed.