Month: September 1993

He chair of the ACT Tourism Board, Charles Wright, led a charmed life or had a guardian angel with respect to his taxation affairs, Liberal Senator Bronwyn Bishop said at a Senate Estimates Committee meeting yesterday.

The Minister for Administrative Services, Senator Bob McMullan, accused Senator Bishop of a scandalous misuse of parliamentary privilege to sully Mr Wright’s reputation.

Also yesterday, the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, stood by her appointment of Mr Wright as chair of the Tourism Advisory Board while the Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, called for him to stand aside pending an inquiry.
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A sensitive Cape York freehold property is expected to be passed back to the traditional Aboriginal owners tomorrow (Monday) under a purchase agreement from Lloyd’s Bank.

The case of the Line Hill property follows two other major land-rights/development disputes on Cape York: one mining the other tourist.

Two Aboriginal representatives, Rodney Accoom and Fred Moses, with their lawyer John Bottoms are on their way to Sydney to sign the purchase agreement.

Mr Bottoms said yesterday that in view of Mabo and of previous court proceedings he was pleased that Lloyd’s Bank, the mortgagee in possession, was able to negotiate with the traditional owners for a purchase agreement.
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The ACT minority Government is assured of getting its Budget through the Legislative Assembly following a commitment yesterday by two Independents.

Michael Moore and Helen Szuty said their position was different from the Greens and the Democrats in the Federal Senate who with the Opposition forced a changed to some Budget measures.

Mr Moore and Ms Szuty said that before the last election they had given a commitment to guarantee supply and appropriation to the Government and not to move a no-confidence motion in the Chief Minister. The Federal Democrats and Greens had given no such promise.
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Whenever you hear your favourite warm and cuddly ACT Minister utter the word “”consultation” freeze.

Go back over the sentence and ask what does it really mean. “”Consultation” is the buzz word. Nothing happens without consultation. Well, last week the ACT Government got caught.

The story starts a year ago when the Minister for Idle Youth, Terry Connolly, noted seething masses of drunken, smoking yobs crowding the bars and clubs of Canberra, mostly in upstairs or downstairs hideaways with narrow entrances.

He quite rightly asked: what if there were a fire? The youth would fry. Something had to be done. A law had to be passed.
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The Opposition’s fossilised response the ACT Budget got only half the story.

Kate Carnell called it the Jurrasic Park Budget _ a simile that is destined for clichedom over its next 160 million uses. She was comparing the ACT Government to another extinct lifeform _ Stalinism. While other governments were adapting and privatising the unfit ACT Government was batting on with State ownership of property and the means of production and exchange, she said.

Carnell could have used the Jurrasic Park analogy to better effect. Quite recently palaeontologists grovelling in the Badlands of Wyoming discovered an unknown attribute of dinosaurs: they were social animals which lived in groups and nurtured their young after hatching.
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Molonglo, Brindabella and Ginninderra were confirmed in the Gazette yesterday as the names for the three electorates for the ACT Legislative Assembly.

It rejected the name Namadgi for the southern seat, saying it could not authenticate it as an Aboriginal name.

The boundaries were also confirmed. The confirmation came from the augmented ACT Electoral Commission which hears final objections after the earlier publication of the Redistribution Committee’s findings.

Those findings stand. Ginninderra (five seats) will comprise Belconnen and Hall. Brindabella (five seats) will comprise Tuggeranong and the Woden suburbs of Torrens, Pearce and Chifley and the southern remainder of the ACT. Molonglo (seven seats) will comprise North and South Canberra, Gungahlin, Weston Creek and Woden (exclusing Torrens, Chiefley and Pearce).
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Add pars to hospice story…..cut in as you can.

The Minister for Heatlh, Wayne Berry, denounced the decsions as outrageous and obstructionist.

The NCPA had rejected the ACT’s first choice of site and then had put up technical objections to its other choice on the QEII site in Civic.
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What a delight to see politicians thinking more than three years ahead.

When the federal executive dumped on the ACT branch of the ALP yesterday it had little to do with the pre-selection of sitting members of the ACT Legislative Assembly. And little, indeed, to do with sitting Federal Members. The real issue was pre-selection for the third ACT federal seat which, according to present population trends, must be created before the next election.

Now the third seat will almost inevitably an ALP one. Mr Gerry Mander himself would have difficulty weaving a boundary line through Red Hill, Forest and Weetangera to form a Tory seat. John Haslem won Canberra for the Liberals in 1975 in the anti-Gough landslide and then retained it having proved himself the local Member par excellence in 1977. But it was a two-election wonder. The ACT is a Labor stronghold.
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Tppointments to all boards, statutory authorities and councils would have to be made by Assembly committees under legislation proposed by Independent MLA Michael Moore.

He said yesterday that he was confident he had the numbers in the Assembly to get the law through.

The move comes after the Opposition criticised two appointments of prominent Labor Party members to statutory offices by Labor Ministers.
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The Department of Administrative Services had not referred the Australian Capital Auctions matter to Australian Securities Commission, an ASC spokesman said yesterday.

A departmental officer told the Senate Estimates committee, “”The matter has also been referred to the fraud people in the AFP and the Australian Securities Commission”.

Australian Capital Auctions was the trade name of Sale-O Pty Ltd which went into liquidation owing the Federal Government and others more than $1 million.
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