March 26, 2012

Horse 1305 - The Queensland Election and The Death of Dialogue

Unlike the federal election in 2010, we are really very quite sure of what Queenslanders have said. Collectively they emphatically wanted the removal of the Bligh government and want the LNP and Campbell Newman installed until 2015.
This Queensland election in particular does highlight something for me which I think is slightly dangerous about Queensland's unicameral parliament.

Unlike every other state (the territories do not count), Queensland is unique in having a unicameral legislature. This means that once legislation passes the house, there is no review by another body and bills which escape the floor are almost always signed off by the Governor.

In the election just held, the LNP will hold 78 seats, Labor 7, the Australian Party 2 and Independents 2; there is also the chance that following the by-election which will be called as a result of Anna Bligh retiring from the seat of South Brisbane, that it could shift further to LNP 79 - Lab 6.
This means to suggest that for every one Labor seat, there will be at least eleven LNP seats and if the LNP wins South Brisbane, thirteen.
If you are in a situation of having at least 11 voices against you, what this means in effect is that no serious opposition to any bill can be mounted until at least 2015 and even if Labor tries to amend legislation or even dare to originate legislation, their voice will be completely cancelled.

This is of course fine if this is what the people of Queensland have asked for and the results of the election would suggest that is the case but I wonder what a result like this actually does for political dialogue in the state of Queensland.
In New South Wales, people would be hard pressed to name anyone in the Opposition apart from John Robertson, much less who the members of the shadow cabinet are. In Queensland though, Labor doesn't even have enough members to even claim official party status let alone properly fill out a shadow cabinet.

As far as dialogue goes in the world of print media, Queensland and Brisbane especially only really has one daily newspaper - The Courier-Mail. You would expect that for the next three years, it will be generally supportive of the Newman LNP Government as News Limited newspapers roughly are throughout Australia.

What this Queensland State has said is that until 2015, there will be no real political dialogue and probably no discourse either. Granted that that is the will of the people but I'm wondering if that really is what people want.

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