New Parliament

There will be 32 new MPs - eight women and 24 men - in the 43rd Parliament at what has turned out to be a pivotal moment in Australian history. 

Says it all really, doesn't it? It's 2010 in Australia and we have 8 new women MPs and  we have heard from a host of men who believe they are richly entitled to the job of Prime Minister . While some of the men have been playing yes but, no but, yes but, no but other men have been set on an adversarial, destructive stance and some have been thinking about chasing white elephants around the countryside. Some believe they come from the only place in Australia where they look each other straight in the eye and tell the truth and forget we all come from there. The problem is some people have learned to bend reality so they can claim the glory of the top job because they are the only person who can do it. But, quite frankly, I still live in hope. I live in hope that we can create a parliament where women can contribute and succeed. We are past the 50s, past the 60s, past the 70s and we are in 2010 for crying out loud. There are some remarkable women in this country who contribute strongly and well to all aspects of our society and economy. These women have learned a lot along the way but they are still not entitled to feel as though they can be Prime Minister. Women have had to learn a lot in order to participate in our society which has transmogrified into an economy. So they have had to learn to talk the talk, walk the walk ,with or without a bag, and know they can develop a unique style of leadership which has its own brand of success.In short, these new women in leadership can come up with the goods. Then we have Wyatt Roy our new 20 year old new parliamentarian and  Ken Wyatt our indigenous member of the House of Representatives. Later on we shall have the young Amanda Rishworth who pulled in fantastic results in her electorate and we have a greater show of Greens. In fact, what we have, is the makings of a great collaborative group and so the biparisan group has got to go. It's last century. There are so many parliamentarians who have worked hard to achieve their place and presumably have some good skills and qualities to offer to the governance of our country  so we don't actually want it to boil down to a few who have a rather lopsided say. We need all those people to be working at full capacity for us. On a good day the media gets to the bottom of some of the intricacies and gets the information out and straight. There have been some great discussions on radio these past couple of weeks which help me have hope. When we do actually talk, we talk well. We need to keep it up!