Federal Parliament has heard countless motherhood statements from MPs over the years, but there was nothing remotely feel-good about Senate President John Hogg's advice to Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young to remove her toddler from the chamber because ''we can't allow children to be in here for a division''.
Hanson-Young had brought her two-year-old daughter into the Senate on Thursday in order spend a few minutes with her before the toddler flew to Adelaide believing that, as on a previous occasion, there would be no objection to her presence. She did not reckon on the president's hard-line attitude to divisions in the Senate.
Until she was ordered out of the chamber so that senators could vote on a measure to ban junk-food advertising during children's television viewing times the child had been invisible to all intents and purposes. Hogg's order, however, reduced her to tears before she was hurriedly removed. Not without some justification, Hanson-Young later claimed to have been humiliated by the incident.
Senate divisions normally take only a few minutes to conclude, and this one would probably have been no different, despite the alien presence of a small child. There is no dispute that the toddler was quiet and well-behaved, and though Hogg may not have known here presence was temporary, his officiousness prompted not only protests from Greens Leader Bob Brown but a further debate on the propriety of allowing MPs, especially mothers, to bring children into parliamentary chambers.
The avuncular Barnaby Joyce opined that the incident was a Greens stunt, arguing that that not only did Hanson-Young have several alternatives available to her regarding the care of her child, but that she should have recognised the rules, procedures and sanctity of the Senate ''a place where we make serious decisions, including those which may result in sending our fellow Australians to war''. As platitudes and motherhood statements go, this was plausible, if only slightly tarnished by the fact that MPs themselves are frequently guilty of childish behaviour, especially during Question Time.
Of course, Joyce's views are shared by many other, generally older and more conservative, Australians who assert that children should be seen and not heard, and certainly never taken into the workplace, much less our hallowed chambers of Parliament. Nevertheless, women comprise a large percentage of the workforce, and have done so for many years encouraged by governments instituting paid maternity leave for public servants and subsidising childcare. Mothers who juggle the demands of a career with rearing a child (sometimes to the point where both unavoidably coincide) are a well-established part of working life, tolerated (for the most part) by employers and colleagues, if not welcomed. But not by certain politicians and parliamentary officials.
For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times
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