Prominent Senate Committee Inquiries
One of the most high-profile Senate committee inquiries was the Senate Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident, which in 2002 investigated what became known as the Children Overboard Affair. The events and subsequent Senate committee inquiries were widely reported, and the transcripts of the inquiry formed the basis of a play, A Certain Maritime Incident. Other high-profile inquiries included the Community Affairs committee's inquiry into Children in Institutional Care, which brought to wide public notice the experiences of children who had been placed in care in sometimes inhumane circumstances and was directly responsible for state governments and churches making public apologies to the victims of abuse or neglect; the Select Committee on Mental Health, which contributed to widespread discussion of mental health issues and to a major funding boost for services in 2006; and the 2006 inquiry into the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill, which contributed to a government decision not to proceed with controversial migration legislation.
Read more about this topic: Australian Senate Committees, The Impact of Senate Committees
Famous quotes containing the words prominent, senate and/or committee:
“The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“It took six weeks of debate in the Senate to get the Arms Embargo Law repealed—and we face other delays during the present session because most of the Members of the Congress are thinking in terms of next Autumn’s election. However, that is one of the prices that we who live in democracies have to pay. It is, however, worth paying, if all of us can avoid the type of government under which the unfortunate population of Germany and Russia must exist.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I find it profoundly symbolic that I am appearing before a committee of fifteen men who will report to a legislative body of one hundred men because of a decision handed down by a court comprised of nine men—on an issue that affects millions of women.... I have the feeling that if men could get pregnant, we wouldn’t be struggling for this legislation. If men could get pregnant, maternity benefits would be as sacrosanct as the G.I. Bill.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)