A Quote by Sheila Fraser
Parliament has become so undermined it is almost unable to do the job that people expect of it. A glaring example is the budget bill, where there was no thoughtful debate or scrutiny of the legislation.
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I would say to the people of Queensland, and to all listeners around the country, is that if you want stable government in the next term of parliament, it's not just enough to reelect the [Malcolm] Turnbull government. It's also important to elect a senate which will be able to deal with the important reforms, with the important legislation, in a way in which the senate in the last parliament was unable to deal with.
It goes to local authorities and even to members of Parliament so that individual citizens almost become people who want to sit and wait for their member of Parliament to come and solve the problem. Now that won't take you anywhere. And if you follow it, you will see that it feeds corruption in the country.
There are two pieces of legislation that are related. There's the Communal Land Rights Bill. Then there is the legislation that was approved which has to do with the role and the place and the function of the institution of traditional leadership. Now that legislation, not the Communal Land Rights Bill, provides for the setting up of particular committees that would work together with the elected municipalities.
The immigration bill - the new immigration bill - [Bill Clinton] has stripped the courts, which Congress can do under the leadership of the president, so that people who had a right to asylum or to petition - for asylum who were legal residents are now unable to go through because that part of the bill has been taken out.
I feel like people expect me to give them easy answers, but there aren't really easy answers. There are only harder questions. And unless we get to the harder questions part, about what this conversation is really about...of course I want an immigration bill to pass. I want people to have a driver's license and work permits and green cards and passports. But this conversation transcends this bill. We're not going to have a perfect bill. This is politics. I feel like my job is instead of giving people easy answers, my job is to actually to ask people to probe deeper.
For one, we very much need in any immigration bill - we need protection for people who are in this country and who have not become citizens, for example, that they are protected and legitimized and given permanent residency here. And we want to see some things of that kind added to the immigration bill.
Although Senate Bill 1556 has received attention for its perceived focus, my job is to look at the actual substance of the legislation.
We should not use special budget procedures to jam through legislation to drill in the Arctic Refuge. This topic is too important to the public to address it in such a back-door manner. We should be having a full, open discussion of the issue during an energy debate.
Parliament's job is to conduct discussions. But many a time, Parliament is used to ignore issues, and in such situations, obstruction of Parliament is in the favour of democracy. Therefore, parliamentary obstruction is not undemocratic.
Labour believes that every trade deal should come before parliament for a full debate on the floor of the House of Commons, with a vote at the end of that debate.
A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the "Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act," was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby's shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week. Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend - but is it really necessary to put the word "killing" in the title of a major piece of legislation?
Talk radio is an asset to our nation because it encourages strong and healthy debate about public policy, and there is no reason to affect that debate with government legislation.
The American people expect more from Congress. They expect fiscal responsibility and common sense. They expect us to return to the pay-as-you-go budget rules that we had enacted in the past that helped us establish a surplus, however briefly.
Not in the constitution, but I would propose a law to the French parliament that provides for reducing the budget deficit year by year, until we have reached a balanced budget by 2017.
This is a tough business, and you're asked to do a job. And part of doing that job is to rate and to do well and to perform, and at certain points, when people are unable to do the job they're hired to do, what happens is people are let go. Their contract is not renewed.
I will continue to fight for legislation that forces Congress to read the bills! I will fight for a vote on my bill that calls for a waiting period for each page of legislation. I will continue to object when Congress sticks special interest riders on bills in the dead of night! And if Congress refuses to obey its own rules, if Congress refuses to pass a budget, if Congress refuses to read the bills, then I say: Sweep the place clean. Limit their terms and send them home!
