Forget the quaint view that the Senate is a retirement home for fogeys.
It's scarier than a prison cell or a call from Mick Gatto; more daunting than a death sentence.
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Under pressure: Hinch feeling the pinch
Independent Senator Derryn Hinch may have sealed the fate of the ABCC construction watchdog under pressure from the government and crossbenchers alike.
Just ask Derryn Hinch.
Getting wedged between a government desperate for a win in the Senate, an opposition keen to deny any such thing and an infestation of crossbenchers bent on squeezing the merest drop of advantage from the stand-off placed Senator Hinch, in his own words, under "probably more pressure than I've ever felt in my life".
![Senator Derryn Hinch](/web/20161203042556im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/1/g/e/c/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt0lk6.png/1480486231491.jpg)
Here's a bloke who knows a bit about pressure.
He's been jailed twice and served five months home detention for contempt of court after breaching suppression orders on paedophiles and a murderer, been sacked by newspapers and TV and radio stations around 15 times on his count, surfed the heights of great wealth and bones-of-his bum bustedness and faced death before getting a last-minute liver transplant.
Oh, yes, and that's not even taking into account an on-air blue with Mick Gatto, who is not the sort of fellow you'd really want coming at you. The verbal rumble ended with Gatto snarling that Hinch was a maggot who would very soon find himself in his grave.
And the Senate is more intimidating than all this?
![Senator Derryn Hinch between leader of the opposition in the Senate Penny Wong and Employment Minister Michaelia Cash on ...](/web/20161203042556im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/0/k/i/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt0lk6.png/1480486231491.jpg)
Could Hinch be slowing down?
He is, after all, 72.
![Derryn Hinch in hospital when he had his liver transplant.](/web/20161203042556im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/0/o/k/t/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt0lk6.png/1480486231491.jpg)
But no. It's not age wearying the Human Headline.
It's the confronting sight of rapacious fellow crossbenchers going in for the kill, apparently.
All that wheeling, dealing, bickering and bartering, which led, finally, to Wednesday's vote in favour of re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
The desire for a new ABCC was, ostensibly, the excuse for the election that created the current Senate, which often enough looks a bit like the barroom scene from Star Wars
It was "disgusting" to watch the crossbenchers wheedling concessions large and small out of the government in return for their votes, said the shocked Hinch, previously thought to be unshockable.
All that "opportunistic and self-serving" behaviour. Nick Xenophon getting more water flowing down in the Murray River, David Leyonhjelm forcing the ABC and SBS boards to explain themselves to the public, Pauline Hanson supporting a 15 per cent backpackers' tax [all for nothing, it turns out]...Deal upon deal.,
About all Hinch got was was a handshake on a better payment deal for subcontractors plus protections and compo for whistleblowers.
It sickened him to the point he dreamed of happier days when a prime minister could rely upon Senators to rouse themselves from their naps occasionally to grant the government its wishes. Â
"I'll tell you one thing," said Hinch. "I wish, in one way, I wish the government had a five-seat majority in the Senate and I wouldn't have to be the man in the middle. Because I'm pretty new to this."
He'll get accustomed to it.
Hanson, Xenophon, Leyonhjelm ... they've all been there before. They learned long ago not to turn away from the blood when they screw governments and prime ministers to the wall. No place for sensitive old hearts in the Senate.
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