House of Representatives Question Time 13th August

Today I thought I would have a look at question time in the House of Representatives. I imagined there would be quite a lot of fiery questions asked between the parties, trying to catch each other off guard about the points of their respective policies. However, what I found very interesting was that members of the Coalition would ask questions of each other. I thought this was pathetic! What a waste of time. Instead of politicians having a debate it was members of the same party asking questions of their colleagues that were obviously prepared and rehearsed before hand. For example, Mr Henry asks a question of Mr Howard beginning with ‘my question is addressed to the greatest Prime Minister in Australian history’. After a long series of interjections Mr Henry finally asks Mr Howard a leading question about the importance of a modern workplace relations system to the Australian economy. Mr Howard answers ‘in reply to the greatest member the electorate of Hasluck has ever seen…’ and then continues to rattle off a bunch of statistics that prove the new workplace relations system is effective and any policies developed by the Labor party would be terrible for Australian workers and the economy.

It was all a little too pretentious for me. I think that question time should not be about asking questions of your own party (because they can do that any time) but about asking the other parties to explain their thoughts about issues effecting the Australian public.