Thanks Fielding, you F#ck!

This is exactly why you don't elect one party into a majority position in both houses of parliament.

The only effective Senate in Australia is one which is balanced by the left and right, with independents and minority parties making up the middle ground. In a situation like this, we hear useful debate on major issues before they are voted on. Having a hung parliament which can only be broken by independents and the minority parties means that even if a bad decision results, at least it was debated properly.

The current Senate is useless.... Everyone votes along party lines to the detriment of the public. This is not how a representative parliament is supposed to work. It is ridiculous when 1 person out of an entire chamber crosses the floor to vote with his/her conscience. 1 person. 1 person out of 76 elected officials decided that their party's policy was a bad idea and crossed the floor. What is the point of this? If you are in the minority you might as well not bother turning up to work!

And as for Steve Fielding of the Family First party. I fail to see how cutting universities ability to provide services for their students is going to benefit families. You had the power to do something useful with your position in the Senate (which you only got from preferences) but you wasted it.
I am not upset because of the impact on me, I couldn't care less cos I only have 1 more year at university and I have already benefited immensely from the services that my University has been able to provide with my compulsory contributions. I have had the security of knowing that literally hundreds of services (financial aid, counselling, tutoring, job search help, clubs and societies, and one of the best school newspapers in the country) to name just a few, are available to me. My anger is that people coming out of high school will be denied the same wonderful experience that I have had at my University. I cannot imagine how dry my Uni life would have been without this added colour. Even over here in the States, the home of user-pays, universities still charge fees in order to provide and subsidise activities. This sort of stuff is what makes University such a wonderful and diverse place to be. These services can not be provided with a user pays system....

-Lot's Wife (school newspaper) is a much loved Monash institution, but even it would struggle to survive if they had to charge readers.
-The benefit of counselling is knowing you can turn up whenever you like and see someone for free. If people don't feel like they can just pop in for a visit, they wont.
-Clubs and Societies (the places that add the most vibrancy to the campus) will have to increase their fees to a point where everyone will turn away from them and just turn up to university to go to class and then go home.

The thing which makes me most angry is the Government saying on one hand that they are trying to save us poor students from paying the fee ($441.20 this year), while on the other changing the acronym for HECS to CSP to allow them to decrease funding to universities so that the universities cop all the criticism for raising their fees. This change to the legislation meant that I paid around $1000 more for my studies this year compared to last year. So hip-hooray for the government, thanks to them I am now around $550 worse off per year AND I now have no services from the university! GREAT! Thanks Mr Howard!

I'm sorry to use this as a forum, but I have not been this angry with our representatives since they decided to screw up Iraq.