The decision of government senators to defeat an Opposition proposal on Friday to send the Maintenance Bill to a joint select committee of both houses of Parliament for further study is obviously the first of many hurdles the bill will face.

According to the Leader of Opposition Business in the Senate, Anthony Johnson, the intervention of the committee is needed to ensure that the views of those who would be most affected by the provisions can be aired and debated.

Senator Johnson told the Senate Friday that the Opposition felt that the matter was of such fundamental importance to every citizen of the country that the general public needed to be made aware of the provisions and to be invited to be heard before it is passed.

“It deals with a large number of matters which are not normally spoken about in public. It deals with intimate relationships between individuals. The implications are large, the implications are serious,” Senator Johnson pleaded.

“The range of arrangements that we have in Jamaica whereby women and men get together is wide. There are visiting relationships, casual relationships, common-law relationships, informal relationships, marriage and marriage which isn’t operating as marriage, in that there’s a breakdown of marriage and persons go their separate ways,” Senator Johnson pressed his point.

“All of these things need to be addressed, and since the government has brought a bill on it and we are going to be speaking about it, I honestly think that the proper, the logical method which has been put forward in the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, is that a committee be empowered to meet with members of both Houses to discuss a matter which is of fundamental, or critical and, indeed, intimate importance to members of the Jamaican community.”

But government members, led by Leader of Government Business Senator Burchell Whiteman, and Attorney-General A J Nicholson noted that the changes had been delayed since the 1970s, which was long enough.

Senator Whiteman pointed out that it was actually tabled prior to the summer recess and that the Opposition gave no indication, up to the second reading, that it wanted it referred to a joint select committee.

Senator Whiteman also took the opportunity to swipe at the media, suggesting that it could better help to elucidate the issues for public consumption.

“We believe that a debate would elucidate and illuminate many of the issues for the public, if properly reported upon, without sensation and without embellishment and without any prophecy as to what is to happen,” he said.

Senator Whiteman obviously feels that more attention is paid to the urgency of bills addressing crime and violence and taxes than those addressing social legislation.

“So often with social legislation, important social legislation, we say well, it’s not urgent, it has nothing to do with crime or to do with taxes so we can let it languish,” he said.

And he may well be right, because the tendency has been, especially since the start of the tripartite discussions on crime involving the private sector, government and Opposition, to rush bills dealing with the subject through both Houses to meet the tripartite agenda.

Senator Whiteman thinks that the Maintenance Bill, however, is of such fundamental importance, in relation to the protection of children and the vulnerable, as well as relationships between people, that the delay he envisages a select committee would create could run into “another few years”, as he suggested was the case with the Rights of Spouses Act.

However, the underlying issue here seems to be the fact that this Bill will be legislating major cultural changes and, while crime and tax issues are less likely to create cultural changes, this one looks certain to create a major upheaval, unless the society is prepared for it.

The question is how will the parliamentarians be assured that the society is now ready for this major cultural change, even despite years of discussion and debate, without opening it up to a joint select committee to test the pulse of the public?

And furthermore, if Senator Whiteman thinks that the media has a role to play, why shouldn’t that role include airing its opinions, as well?