Is the world ending?

This week in politics, for the first time in a very long time we have had no SSOs for an entire WEEK! Who would have thought that this week would come? Not I. However in its place we have had a very interesting, some may say pathetic week of question times. The first example that comes to mind is yesterday morning, which resulted in Opposition Leader stony Abbott and Opposition Manger of Business sprinting out of the HOR chamber. Now most people have seen the footage, as it s played on all news programs continuously on Wednesday, but most people don't know why such drastic events occurred. Let me explain. On Wednesday morning Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey was attempting to debate whether or not the debt ceiling should be raised as outlined in the Federal Budget, on May 8th 2012. This raising is common practice because as GDP, or our economy increases, the amount of money that we CAN borrow will increase automatically,because theoretically we are better off. Although the Shadow Treasurer should be aware of this he wanted to debate the issue anyway, causing the government o try and place a gag motion on him. When the time can for a vote Craig Thomson voted in favour of the Coalition. This is also standard, because since Thomson is now an independent and sits on the cross bench he is free to vote how he sees fit. There is also a convention that says independents will always vote to block gag motions if they are going to stop debate, and therefore it was only natural for the newly independent Craig Thomson to vote WITH the Coalition. Was it a stunt orchestrated by the government? Maybe, but all it really did was give the media another story to write about the badly behaved politicians. You could be forgiven for thinking that this incident was the best thing that happened in Parliament this week, but in actual fact minimal policy was also debated. The Mabo decision was mentioned as its 20 years this weekend and the controversial Roy Hill Enterprise Migration Agreement was 'debated' and insults were thrown. Overall it was an interesting week in parliament, politician commentators did wonder marvel at the fact Opposition Leader did not call to suspend standing orders even once. So maybe the world is ending . . .