23 April 2009

It's not a partnership, it's "contract parliamentarianism"

| johnboy
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CityNews have had an interesting chat with the Greens’ leader Parliamentary Convenor, Meredith Hunter.

In particular here’s her view on how the contract is going:

    “We have an agreement with the Labor Party which forms part of our relationship, but I don’t know how the Labor Party feels when we vote with the others, you’d have to ask them that. There have been a number of occasions in the last six months where it [the Greens-Labor agreement] hasn’t stopped Labor from going out and slamming us. Does that mean that there is a dummy spit and we go: ‘Well that’s it! It’s all over! Hand the keys over, it’s done!’ No. You have got to be a little bit tougher than that.

    “What has developed is a good working relationship with many ministers. It would, however, be fair to say that there are people (ministers) that are more enthusiastic than others (when dealing with the Greens).”

Also apparently the Green and Labor policy objectives are “not too far apart”.

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So is this like if you do a, b, c, d, e, and f, then you can make lots of other decisions for which we are not responsible?

Is this going to fly with the ACT electorate?

Contract parlimentarianism sounds like a contract saying something like “You do a, b, c, d, e, f, and we’ll agree not to oppose your parliamentary leader calling him or herself the chief minister and forming a cabinet.

For the uninitiated, what exactly is “contract parliamentarianism”?

I have been looking at this heading and wondering what it means.

And I am still wondering.

I sort of know what a partnership is. That’s where one partner is held responsible for what the other partner does even if they don’t agree with it.

The Greens are like a shandy.
looks like it could get the job done, but really has no effect.

The article has a pretty silly title: “We’re just like Labor”. The article below it clearly contradicts the claim.

It’s certainly interesting to hear Meredith subtly commenting on His Chiefliness’ struggle to deal with needing to negotiate.

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