Here’s a twist in the tail for all those who think John Howard having control of the Senate is a bad thing. According to Keryn Phelps on RN’s Breakfast program on Friday, the power of the Health Minister to veto RU486 was given to him courtesy of a deal with Senator Brian Harradine for the part-sale of Telstra. Harradine was pro-life and was one of the senators in the previous parliament with the balance of power.
Now Howard doesn’t need to negotiate with Brian Harradine and has a majority in the Senate, upsetting “balance of power” senators isn’t such a big deal. Alternatively, as I’ve put it in another post, there are now 45 balance of power senators, all in the coalition party room. Whichever way you look at it. If Howard had a minority position in the senate and had to depend on Harradine, there is good reason to think that he would not have allowed a conscience vote, in which case we wouldn’t be seeing this outburst of non-party political decision-making.