Media asleep at the wheel on stolen senate seats

http://www.ozpolitic.com/index.html

There are thieves in the Senate. Scott Ryan, Liberal Senator for Victoria and Deborah O'Neill, Labor Senator for NSW will continue to hold their Senate seats after June 2019, while roughly half of their colleagues will face re-election. They will continue to serve from 2019 until 2022, at the expense of Derryn Hinch and Lee Rhiannon. Their seats were stolen on their behalf by the Labor Party and the Coalition. The two major parties have broken promises they made twice to the Australian public in order to secure these seats. These promises took the form of Senate resolutions on 22 June 2010 and 29 June 1998. Both resolutions passed with bipartisan support and stated that the Senate will use the new, fairer method to determine which senators get full (6 year) terms in the event of a double dissolution election. Had they kept this promise, senate thieves Scott Ryan and Deborah O'Neill would be facing re-election in 2019 and Hinch and Rhiannon would have the six year terms that the Australian public voted for. Unfortunately these resolutions are not binding and the Australian constitution permits the Senate to allocate the seats as it pleases, meaning Labor and the Coalition are not bound to keep their promise and can literally get away with anything.

In addition to these two promises, the Labor party passed the relevant legislation (again, non-binding) in 1984. After the 1987 double dissolution election, Coalition Senators voted in favour of using the new method to allocate senate seats, while the Labor party chose to keep the old method - again, because it gave them a bigger share of the seats. It was this 1987 disagreement that prompted the two major parties to pass the 1998 and 2010 resolutions to use the fairer method in the future. They no doubt had every intention of holding each other to this promise, up until the current situation arose in which both stood to benefit from sticking with the unfair method.

This coup has been permitted by a mainstream media that is asleep at the wheel. No major outlet reported on the Senate decision of August 31. They did report on Labor and the Coalition reaching an agreement to do this several weeks earlier. However, the reporting on this agreement simply quoted the insipid justifications given by the major parties and lacked any critical analysis or hard questions. Neither Labor nor the Coalition have been forced by the media to comment on the fact that they both broke promises that they made clearly and repeatedly to the Australian public. They have not been forced to even acknowledge that they made these promises. Neither party has been forced to acknowledge the transparent self-interest behind the decision. Instead, The ABC, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald etc all let the major parties get away with simply pointing out that their agreement was "in keeping with the constitution and precedent", as if the new legislation and the repeated promises to use it never happened. The media has been publishing these insipid justifications and excuses on behalf of the major parties, while leaving out relevant facts and failing in their duty to ask the important questions.

Please contact your federal MP and senators using the links below (scroll down to "please support democracy in the senate") and let them know that you intend to punish them at the next election if they do not give back the stolen senate seats. Please also write to your newspaper and let them know of your disapproval at their failure to report on this coup and your scepticism at their ability to do their job. Please also write to Senators Ryan and O'Neill and let them know that you consider them to be thieves in the Senate and that their ongoing presence after 2019 undermines the legitimacy of the Senate.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/index.html

And that the media turns a blind eye to them - no matter how big they are.

Can you cite an example of a bigger failure in reporting?

I believe the media did in fact report on 9/11.

I see. So that video of planes flying into the WTC was Bush propaganda?

It's quite simple Unforgiven. Labor and the Coalition passed bipartisan resolutions in 1998 and 2010 promising not to do what they have just done. Breaking these promises has given each party an extra senate seat after 2019. These resolutions are on the public record, but were left out of media reports on the senate outcome. The media did not even report on the August 31 vote in the senate.

Whatever vague criticisms you have of reporting on 9/11 is not in the same ballpark as leaving these clear and transparent facts out of reporting on the outcome of the senate election.

freediver wrote on Sep 11^th, 2016 at 12:34pm:


Come on.  Have you not read the seemingly endless list of promises made by politicians, brazenly broken.

Okay, so the schmedia did not do the song and dance routine you wanted over this.   No-one here a flying ferk seems to give either.  This is the second Thread you have started on the same issue, and this will die on the vine, as did the first.

The UK Daily Mail publishes what the others fear to publish.

Lord Herbert wrote on Sep 11^th, 2016 at 12:47pm:


How ignorant would the British public be without the quality of British news media? UK newspapers are a source of inspiration to dedicated journalists: