Friday, October 8, 2010

Do you know what prorogation means?

Do you know what prorogation is and that we in Australia had one a few weeks back, and that we in Victoria are in one right now, starting yesterday? Like most of you, until recently I had never heard of the word or act before. However earlier this year, on a Canadian friend’s Face book site, she mentioned that she had joined the group “Canadians against Prorogation “. Again not knowing what prorogation was and whether it was just something unique to Canada, I looked it up on the net. And much to my surprise I found that we in Australia have one usually every 3 or 4 years.
According to the Dictionary, Prorogation means: To discontinue a session of (a parliament, for example). Or To postpone; defer.” Thus Parliaments are prorogued before elections to prevent the upper house from sitting during the campaign and to expunge all existing upper house business before the start of the next parliament. In Australia, prorogations not thus related to the conduct of an election are unusual.
So it seems that normally, Prorogations are “normal business” before every election to stop any “funny business, but it appears that in Canada at least, those normal procedures were being used for abnormal or political purposes and not for what it was originally intended.
So anyway, although I now know, what a prorogation is and that we have them regularly here in Australia, and used properly are good things, I am still most unlikely to use that word myself. Still I can’t help but wonder about how the Canadian Ruling party was using a normal process for an abnormal and seemingly selfish purpose. And similarly, I can’t help wondering if there are similar things in my life that I too am using for in an inappropriate or improper or even selfish reason here. Again Forgetting the Canadians here, the question, I am now asking myself is, am I similarly misusing a good and normal process for my own benefit and am I prepared to stop doing so?
Maybe you too might need to do some similar reflecting now too? Over to you for now!

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