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Malcolm Turnbull is about to find out if the double dissolution election was worth it
It's going to be a colourful final two weeks of parliament - but how many senators will make it to the end of the year?
By Andrew P Street
It's the beginning of the final sitting fortnight of the year for the Australian Parliament, and it looks awfully like being fieldwork for a thesis entitled "The 2016 Double Dissolution: who thought that was a great idea?"
The government of Malcolm Turnbull looks set to attempt to pass the pieces of legislation which acted as the triggers for the dissolution of parliament and the subsequent election, and two of the senators put in the upper house thanks to said election will not be participating for reasons that are a wee bit embarrassing.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.Credit: AP
The registered organisations bill seeks to force corporate levels of responsibility on the heads of non corporations – or, more accurately, unions – and is probably going to pass the senate after Labor forced the government to make some amendments. It's a win – but if the law is only passing because of Labor, it's hard to see why we needed to go to an early election to get this moderated outcome.
The second is the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. It's odd that it needs reintroduction since it still exists: it's just called the Fair Work Commission and still has the same powers as it did as the ABCC, only with more transparency, accountability, and oversight. These things, presumably, are the problems.
One Nation senator and constitutional law fantasist Rod Culleton. Credit: Stefan Gosatti
At this point there's not going to be a joint sitting of Parliament but a normal attempt to pass the laws through the senate – you know, in the usual way that legislation is passed, which doesn't require a double dissolution.
In the current Senate the Coalition have 30 seats, Labor have 26, and the Greens (who also oppose the reintroduction of the ABCC) have nine. The legislation now needs 38 votes to pass and thus hinges on getting eight of the 10 crossbench votes (after Family First senator Bob Day's resignation).
Jacqui Lambie has described the legislation as having "more holes in it than a target at the shooting range" and at this point Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm has also indicated he won't support the ABCC bill as it stands, as it's an affront to his very particular notion of freedom.
One Nation has also indicated they'll probably support the bill, which would put the numbers at 34 in the government's camp.
So now we get into the harder negotiations, where it all comes down to how flexible the government is willing to be.
Derryn Hinch hasn't indicated which way he'll go, and the Nick Xenophon Team have indicated that they would probably support the bill provided that there are a raft of protections included, such as that subcontractors are protected if a construction company collapses. If Hinch can be swayed, NXT's support would clinch the deal: 38 to 37.
However, NXT's amendments also bring Bob Day, who was a huge fan of the legislation, back into focus – and that's especially embarrassing since he won't be voting as he is no longer in Parliament thanks to the collapse of his construction company which, y'know, left his subcontractors unprotected – along with families who paid for homes they're yet to see built.
Day's eligibility to have even been elected as a senator is also in question due to his commonwealth office being in a building he would appear to have owned (while he'd ostensibly sold it to a colleague, there are questions as to whether any money actually changed hands). This issue is now being referred to the High Court.
There's also potentially one less One Nation vote since WA senator Rod Culleton is currently engaged in a High Court battle over his eligibility to be in Parliament, which may prevent him from showing up for votes.
And if anyone was thinking "well, this is a complex matter for which one would presume this senator has consulted legal experts with a keen knowledge of constitutional law," be reassured that Culleton is taking his cues from fellow senator Malcolm Roberts, in which peculiar notions of sidestepping legal process through magical thinking seem to be trumping actual expertise.
"It is no wonder Banks, Trustees, their liquidators, receivers and agents have been able to use the Supreme Court of each State to get arbitrary orders stripping the assets of hardworking Australians and giving them with the help of Armed SWAT Teams, to the legal thieves, condoned by the State Governments of Australia," he wrote in a submission that reads uncannily like a late-period Morrissey lyric.
His case in the High Court seems to hinge upon successfully challenging the authority of both the Australian Parliament and the High Court itself, which is a playfully ambitious argument to make – not least because if the High Court ruled itself invalid, it presumably would thereby rob itself of the validity to make that very ruling, surely?
(Also, if Culleton sincerely felt that the government of Australia had ceased to be a legal authority in 1990 as it "has not been constituting itself with the Queen", why did he run for election in order to be a representative of said illegitimate government?)
And without Culleton and Day's votes, the ABCC bill could well fail at 37 votes for and against.
So, in short: the government looks set to spend the last sitting fortnight of the year passing one piece of contested legislation thanks to the opposition, and at best only narrowly passing the other only after focussing attention on two potentially ineligible senators controversially elected thanks to Turnbull's decision to go to a double dissolution.
Still, from the Coalition's perspective, a win's a win. And hey, next year can hardly be worse – right?
Andrew P Street's new book The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull: the Incredible Shrinking Man in the Top Hat is out now through Allen & Unwin, and book now for The Double Disillusionists live at Giant Dwarf talking Has Trump Doomed Australia with Fairfax's Jacqueline Maley and BuzzFeed's Mark di Stefano on Thursday, November 24.