I suspect the principle of convention is going to be explored in a series of posts - \o/ - Anyway, convention does not have the force of law, but is assumed to have the force of practice, otherwise known as custom or tradition, and carry weight accordingly. This is the wrong way to view it, convention is in reality the sovereign's whim. Today's Senate sitting had an example with the first bill reading.
Andrew Bartlett said [pdf] after the first reading of the co-bundled Tax Amendments for Income Tax and Budget Measures:
I want to speak briefly to the part of the motion asking that the bills be taken together, and I believe I can. I make the point that the Democrats had requested that these bills not be taken together, that they be dealt with separately. They both deal with substantial and significant taxation matters.
Certainly we do not wish to delay passage of them, but, given that they deal with substantial and significant matters each in their own right, we believe they each merit individual examination through the second reading stage. I want to record that as our preference.
I am not going to go on at length about it but I think it is preferable that convention applies: if a senator does not want them to be taken together, that it not happen unless there are compelling circumstances. I do not think any exist in this case.
Bartlett's appeal to convention was ignored. Abetz did the second reading of the two bills together, and Labor quite happily spoke on the bills 'cognate'.
Convention is subordinate to the sovereign, and is not guided by custom or history. We have to look at it as we would individuals expressing their liberty through self-interest. Convention is maintained only so long as it is in the self-interest of the sovereign to act within that convention.
Consequently we cannot look at past conventions as a single body of connected events that have the same force of history. They become unitary events, unconnected, except for the sovereign's self-interest in acting that way.
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tangents on this subject on husi.
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Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
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Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
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Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
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South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
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Who Is Cam Riley
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
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Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
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www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
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