Parliament: a class actParliament: a class act
When was the last time MPs took industrial action? Doctors do it. Lawyers are thinking about it. Teachers and nurses strike. But MPs? I don't think so. Why?
Is it written "I say unto you: serve my people as you would me. Honour them, love them, obey and cherish them. And let not one day be lost." [Parliamentarians 26:4]?
No, I made that up.
Perhaps MPs don't strike because everyone would laugh at them if they did. It would just be too embarrassing for everyone concerned. People would simply say: so what? Things would just tick over as before.
So when an elected member enters parliament, he or she is entering a strike-free zone. The bitter antagonisms usually separating capital from labour are put aside. Indeed, our parliamentary system can truly be described as the last major hesitation to socialism — because in parliament there are no bosses, and the working majority always rules.
Parliamentary entitlements consequently are rather generous — as you would expect from a body that can vote in its own wage rises. A few hundred of our fellow citizens — members of upper and lower houses nationwide — are doing very nicely thank you. They've "crossed over" (so to speak) and are now liberated from the shackles of class.
Thus freed from the old loyalties, parliamentarians can afford to be neutral, deciding without fear or favour how the rest of us should live. Here perhaps is another reason why MPs don't strike: they don't have to because they run the front office.
This is where I start to get confused. If our MPs have no loyalties one way or another, why do they govern the way they do? While they're doing all right (what with their generous salary, travel and electoral allowances) my life's in the toilet.
I suspect that instead of being impartial in their deliberations, parliamentarians favour those with capital much more than they do me. Why is that, do you think?
Maybe my kind were beaten some way back, and our parliaments are merely administering the spoils of war — dividing the booty among the victors. But, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't remember being vanquished.
Similarly, if times are hard, why must I bear the brunt of them?
Here I am, an ordinary Joe Blow, and my only input to all this is the mark I make on a card every three years or so. On the measures taken, I am simply asked to state whether I like them or not. Even when I don't like them (which is most of the time) and mean to say no, I'm not heard or can protest only by punishing one MP by replacing him or her with another.
As the peasant remarked to King Arthur of Camelot: "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government".
I would say in reprise: "Nor is this one. I am not being governed; I am being had."
By Dave Riley
e-mail: dhell@ozemail.com.au