Deathstar in orbit, phasers primed

Today the new Senate is sworn in. The makeup has changed somewhat, with the Democrats and the indies falling in a ditch to be replaced by a couple of Greens, a god-botherer and some Coalition members.

End result? A Government with no external limit on its legislative power.*

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like I've been dragged to the top of a very big hill on the ricketiest rollercoaster there is... and there's no seatbelt.

This is going to be a wild ride. The Government may discover something I know many of my friends are hoping is the case: that having the power to do anything means that there is also the capacity to be blamed absolutely for anything that goes wrong.

If it is possible that Government action anywhere could avert a problem arising then they could be held responsible.

If their legislation has a wrinkle, a catch or a bloody great hole in it then they're going to cop it because they won't be cutting deals to get it through the chamber and they therefore won't have the Opposition tidying up the more careless (let alone simply destructive) clauses of their bills.

The Opposition could sit back and watch the Government hang itself, but I hope instead that they get to work taking noose-tying lessons and building the bloody gallows, complete with a little music box arrangement that plays Rock Around the Clock when the trapdoor goes, a la The Young Ones.

The Opposition also has to turn adversity to opportunity. Every time the Government has a new barrow to push they should respond with a critique of the Government's agenda and lay out in clear terms why a Labor government would in words and deeds be better than the Coalition.

For this, we will need an end to ambiguity. In particular, we will need an end to lengthy sentences, particularly those with rambling, irrelevant, meaning sapping subclauses, that say nothing and inpire less and which do little other than detract from the pertinent issues at hand with tortured combinations of tired cliches, qualifications that leave your message unclear (unless they're absolutley necessary) and sentences that just ramble on into nothingness because the point was somewhere five minutes ago but you lost it under another thing, but it was probably very important so you should probably try to get back there but at the end the best solution is to shut up.

[deep breath]

The ALP is very capable of good commuication. Kim Beazley is very capable of good communication. Given a clear brief to say nothing but what we want to do, we may well see a very different Opposition now that they have lost much of their influence over the legislation that passes the Senate.

The ALP now has a challenge to be clear about what it wants and put it out there in neon lights. There's only so many opportunities so every one needs to be taken and hammered in.

The Rebel Alliance stirs from its slumber. No longer do they need to negotiate, cajole, amend. No longer can they give the levers an occasional shove. The sparring and jousting is over, this one is to the death. To the last fighter, this is war.

The Rebel Alliance has put out the call to arms- unite one and all, the destruction of the DeathStar is our aim, and we will not rest until it is done!

* This is not strictly true. There is the Constitution, but as we will see with their IR package I thik they're fairly happy to tear that up and start again... oh, and the occasional grumpy National who doesn't mind the idea of losing their endorsement next time up.