THANK HEAVENS FOR THE NORTH- A CASE FOR AN UPPER HOUSE IN QUEENSLAND

_{02 November, 2006}

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Thanks very much Anne and to Dave Egan, your President, and to Paul Bell, LGAQ and ALGA President, who I understand is here, and Mayors and Councillors.  It is a great delight for me to be back with you again.  To answer Dave, these days regrettably I am not in the position I used to be in to hand out money to you, although in fact I think you've got all the money anyhow and don’t know what to do with it!

But, Councillors, I was asked, when I was invited, some time ago to speak at your conference, to nominate a title for my speech – and I think I might have been watching that popular television programme at the time.  And I know everywhere Councillors and Mayors go, - to every meeting, they walk in and people say to them “Thank Goodness you’re here” and as I was watching that programme I though, gee that wouldn’t be a bad thing to talk about.  But I had a variation on that. I thought I’d entitle my speech “Thank Heaven for the North”.
 
Some might have thought that the topic of my speech was about thanking the heavens for giving North Queensland, iconic and long serving leaders like Jim Chapman, Mick Borzi, Les Tyrrell, Kevin Byrne, Tony Mooney, Brendan McNamara, Ron McCullough, John Smith, Corrie Pickering or Pedro Stevens, to name a few.

Or perhaps it might have been about glorifying the abundance in most parts of Northern Australia of what is increasingly becoming Australia’s – indeed the world’s – most precious commodity – water!

Or perhaps my speech could have given thanks for the minerals and minerals processing plants in the North that provide export earnings for Australia and fuel major growth in the booming economies of North America, China and India

The resources we have in sugar, beef, bananas, prawns and tourism are all worthy of thanking the Heavens for.   And the exports from all of our Northern assets – which give Australia about 30% of it export earnings are derived from about 7% of its population.

And we can thank Heavens – or the Australian government, for our learning and research institutions in the North like James Cook Uni, AIMS, Grumpa, CSIRO. Mtsrf, the CRC for Torres Strait and the many fine primary and secondary schools in the north, and indeed the soon to be operating Australian Technical Colleges.

And we should also be grateful for our people in the North – who continue that Aussie characteristic of bygone years – strength in adversity (as the recent Cyclone Larry demonstrates), the pioneering spirit, the willingness to have a go.

But I am not going to talk of any one of those topics – people in this room know all about those attributes – in fact people in this room form part of those attributes.

What I wanted to do today is to wonder aloud why all those attributes, which so clearly benefit the State as a whole, are not better appreciated by all Queenslanders.  Why are they not saying “Thank Heavens for the North”?

Why don’t we get better recognition in the form of a better share of funding for transport, health, education and other infrastructure?

Why don’t we have decent and reliable power and communications in the North?

The answer, I guess, is fairly simple.  We don’t have the political power.

Political Power resides in the South East of our State – and consequently it is the South East of the State that gets the money – even though a disproportionate share of the wealth of the State comes from the North.

How can political power be more evenly distributed across the whole of the State?

One solution might be to get a better form of representation in our State Parliament while preserving the democratic principle of majority rules.

Queensland is the only State in Australia with a unicameral legislature.

I would submit that the existence of 2 houses of parliament in Queensland would better protect liberties.  But, more importantly, from my point of view, a bicameral legislature would give the ability to tap into new and different thoughts that would help ensure fairness and progress right across this State.

Why don’t we have an Upper House in Queensland?  It was abolished because it was obstructive.  And many would say that Upper Houses do not work because, in spite of the best intentions of the founders of our systems of Parliament, these Houses have simply become the playthings of political parties to either rubber stamp or obstruct the lower or democratically representative House of governance - depending on whether the Government or the Opposition has a majority in the Upper Chamber.

As an aside, I have to plead in my own defence, that in spite of the rhetoric and some genuine fears, the Senate has certainly not become a rubber stamp since the Government has had a majority. In fact, the Senate has become more useful in changing government direction, as we did recently in the Media Package of Bills and when the Govt withdrew Migration legislation which was exposed as being unfair – because Senators are not now scoring petty political points and opposing for oppositions sake in the hope of embarrassing the Government of the day – it now actually operates as a genuine house of review trying to improve the general thrust of the elected government’s programme.

But back to my theme:

An upper house (including the Senate in my view) should not be able to hold up legislation indefinitely and should be unable to bring down a government.

Like recent reforms to the House of Lords in the mother of all Parliaments, Upper Houses in my view should be able to delay, and in circumstances, amend government legislation, but not reject it.  But an Upper House can allow proper scrutiny of Government decisions and can, by delaying legislation, give opportunity for expression of popular disagreement.

And if an Upper House was unable to bring down a government or permanently reject the will of the popularly elected Chamber, political partisanship in the Upper House would be unnecessary.

And what better way to address the complaint that having a second Chamber would involve a costly election than to have an upper chamber of people who have already been popularly elected - members who are closest to their constituents – parliamentarians who are at the coal face or grass roots of democracy and governance.

Queensland already has 125 of such people - Mayors from all over the State democratically elected on a fixed date every 4 years. 

Having a second Chamber of Parliament comprised of Mayors drawn from all over the State – intimately attuned and connected to Queenslanders, would provide benefits that would be tangible, particularly for Northerners - at no cost – either in money or political or governance terms.

So, what I am proposing for further research, is a New Upper House for the Queensland Parliament.  The Upper House would be composed of popularly elected Mayors.  Upper House members would get a daily allowance while sitting in Parliament – but would otherwise continue to rely on their existing Mayoral Salary.

The Upper House would be able to delay legislation for say a maximum of 6 months and in some cases could amend legislation but could not bring a Government down by blocking supply.  Any delay of legislation would allow popular pressure to be brought to bear against legislation seen to be unfair – or just plain stupid.

The benefits would include real and independent scrutiny of all Queensland Government decisions – because the inability to block legislation or bring down a Government would mean political grouping and political point scoring would not be necessary.  And having Mayors from all over the State as part of the legislature, for a fixed 4 year term would bring stability and continuity to governance processes and would mean that the needs and aspirations of the North would be better recognised.

So there you have it.  A proposal to reform the governance of Queensland by including Local Government Mayors as part of the legislature – similar to what they do in Germany.

As a State we must be better off with input from real leaders of real people and communities.

And what, you may ask, has this got to do with my subject of “Thank Heavens for the North”?

Well not a lot really.  But if this proposal was something the Northern Local Governments were to take up, were to commission JCU to do further research on, then, when we had a new era of enlightened Government in Queensland, with 2 Houses of Parliament, the people would surely say – what a great idea – Thank Heavens for the North.

And perhaps they might also say when they saw an upper chamber with lots of sensible people in it; perhaps they would turn around and say to that chamber “Thank Goodness you’re here”.

I commend the idea to you all.

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