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Stroganoff or a load of bull?
by Gregor Stronach
John Murphy [1], the Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Trade, has been forced to eat his words today, following a predictable backlash to his complaints over the quality and quantity of food in the Parliament House cafeteria. Murphy gave the canteen a verbal serve over the actual serve of beef stroganoff his wife was given a few days before, using his position in parliament to raise the issue.
Senior National Party Whip Kay Hull leapt to her feet in the chamber to agree, calling for a survey of MPs, Senators and staff on the quality of the food served. It was a rare show of bipartisanship. One, however, that was apparently unsanctioned by the party leadership on either side of the house. Both Mrs Kay and Mr Murphy have been reprimanded by their respective parties over the issue, with Mr Murphy issuing an apology and Mrs Kay allegedly telling manager of Opposition Business Joe Hockey to ‘f--- off’. Each to their own, I guess.
As is usual in politics, once a comment is made, the public backlash [2] isn’t far behind. Australians on low incomes scoffed at the complaints from Murphy and Kay. And in light of the current financial crisis faced by pensioners around the country, it seems that Murphy’s timing couldn’t have been worse.
As embarrassing as the gaffe might be, however, it does shine a light on a particularly interesting aspect of Australian politics. In an open and transparent democracy, members of parliament can – and should – raise any and all issues that they can think of. And if another citizen is interested in that topic, they’re able to find out about it, very easily.
Something many Australians don’t know is that the public record of every word spoken in Parliament, known as the Hansard [3], is freely available on the Internet. And recently, a search function [4] was introduced that allows all Australians to delve into the inner workings of Parliament, going all the way back to Federation. If you’d like to know what the sentiment in the Senate was like on the momentous date of June 3rd, 1989, when Senator Peter Cook revealed to the Senate that he was fond of
It could be safely assumed, then, that an issue’s level of importance to the public could be gauged – roughly – by the number of times it’s been mentioned in Parliament. “The Economy [6]”, for example, has been spoken about 18,971 times in Parliament. “Fraud [7]” has been raised 8371 times. “War [8]” has been spoken about a staggering 29,918 times.
No doubt, Australians will be stunned to know that this is the first instance – ever – that the topic of “Stroganoff” has been raised in Parliament. And for that, Mr Murphy should be congratulated – after all, breaking new ideological ground is what being a member of parliament in the southern hemisphere’s greatest democracy is all about. And if someone wants to claim that their beef stroganoff is just a load of old bull, there’s probably no better place to do it than Australian Parliament House.