Good governments need good opposition. Senator Ruston provided that this week, despite a wall of opacity from the secretaries. (Yes, that’s an AI-generated image.)
The nutters have been out in force in Parliament House this week, and I’m not even talking about the Liberal leadership spill.
Back in November 1992 then PM Paul Keating called the Senate “unrepresentative swill”. And that was the polite part that we can publish in 2026 without offending too many people.
After this week’s two days of health estimates, featuring a fair dollop of farce, it’s hard to argue with PK.
Not everyone was farcical, to be fair. Senator Anne Ruston, it surprises me to say, continues to be incredibly hard-working, well-briefed and researched.
She’s also a bulldog when it comes to persisting with questions when the bureaucrats play a straighter-than-straight bat, giving the bare minimum of detail in their answers.
There were long periods of time, particularly in Wednesday morning’s aged care hearings, when it was only Senator Ruston and committee chair Senator Dorinda Cox at the table, with Rusty going in hard on just where the money is being spent when it comes to Support at Home packages.
Persistent, she most certainly was. Successful in getting answers? Not so much. But hey, at least she is trying.
Now that there’s a new rooster in the Liberal hen house, the question is just how much shuffling of the shadow cabinet deckchairs will Angus Taylor do?
Is Senator Ruston in danger of being moved on from the health shadow?
Personally, I hope not, and I can’t believe I’m saying it. But credit where credit is due. Whatever her motives, Senator Ruston is providing the kind of solid opposition that good governments require to maintain their game.
There were moments when the estimates circus was in full clownitude, however, most of it coming from the fevered brain of One Nation veteran, Senator Malcolm Roberts.
Senator Roberts has a long history of hatred for the TGA and this week was no different. He went after the agency with the all the passion only a true anti-vaxxer can muster.
The trouble is he clearly has no clue what the TGA actually does, how the regulatory approval process works, or how far from actual science the crap he spouts is.
At one point, Labor Senator (and doctor) Michelle Ananda-Rajah could take no more. She turned on Senator Roberts and accused him of undermining the most important public health movement in the world (immunisation) and then called him a disgrace.
Sadly Senator Cox then turned to the broadcast box and made that universal gesture of “cut it off” and the rest is lost to history, for as long as it took for her to restore order.
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Clearly zealots like Senator Roberts don’t even bother listening to the answers. Even if they could understand them, they don’t want to hear them. To them the point is just to get their questions out there on the record, so they can tell their social media following a whole lot more misinformation.
There’s no respect for the experts they’re talking to – at one point the boss of the TGA got sick of being called “Mr” and pointed out that, actually, “it’s professor, Senator”.
It’s sickening, to be honest.
At one point Senator Nita Green, taking her turn representing the federal minister, answered another ridiculous Senator Roberts question by pointing out that there were no circumstancesin which Labor would support any One Nation health policy, EVAH.
Thank god for that.
I usually find senate estimates entertaining. This week I just found it depressing.
I get that public servants have limits to how they can answer questions, but particularly when it came to aged care, health secretary Blair Comley and his offsiders Sonja Stewart and Greg Pugh, were especially obfuscatory.
Is that a word? Anyway, you know what I mean. No way they were going to answer more than they had to, and by the way IT’S NOT AI.
Under no circumstances are the IAT (Support at Home) or the I-CAN (NDIS) AI … OKAY????
They’re just algorithms. HONESTLY.
Ugh. I’m off to try and survive the 300mm of rain expected in my part of the world this weekend. Glub, glub, readers. Glub. Glub.