Today is election Number 3 under self-government and the people of the ACT are still behaving like those a grown-up children who want keep wanting to return to the luxury and comfort of their parents’ house. The house where Mum does the washing and puts delicious meals on the table, Dad provides the car keys, a comfortable roof is put over the head and there are no mortgages, petrol costs, no rent and no food costs. Sometimes there is a little tiff between parent and child, but life is easy and comfortable. There were some late teenage rumblings about leaving home which were put to the test on November 27, 1978, in the form of a referendum on self-government.
In those halcyon days the National Capital Development Commission with lashing of Federal money ran the city. The streets were clean, the hospitals and police were the best in Australia. So why change? Accordingly, 63.5 voted against full self-government; 31.1 for it; 5.4 for local government; and 1.6 voted informal. We wanted to stay with Mum and Dad. But by the mid-1980s Mum and Dad, in the form of Federal politicians, were sick of these pampered ACT children and sick of paying for their lavish upkeep. It was time for the children of the ACT to leave home and support themselves _ whether they liked it or not. And so in 1989 the children of the ACT were forced to go it alone. Moreover, they were given the power to decide how much of their income they would spend on petrol, health care and the rent. Still they hanker unrealistically after Mum and Dad’s house.
It may take some time before they realise that this is it. Even if they went back to Mum and Dad’s house, it would still be fiscal hell. At Mum and Dad’s the bankers are knocking at the door. There are other children making demands. The house needs new plumbing and a new driveway. And there would be no guarantee that the ACT children would be better off. In fact they would be even worse off. A Federal Minister for Territories would be the first victim in the Expenditure Review Committee. At least by going it alone the ACT children will decide for themselves how to spend their meagre income. So today is important. Forget the idea of going back to Mum and Dad _ they have kicked us out permanently. We have to make the best of it and we need the best Parliament possible to do that. It is very trendy in Canberra to scorn the local Parliament. Let’s look at the fact rather than the fiction.
The ACT has fewer elected representatives and spends less money on them that anywhere else in Australia. Further, easy as it is to poke fun at it, our Parliament has an equal or better ratio of diligent, intelligent representatives than elsewhere in Australia. I assure you there are some pretty moronic, lazy specimens sitting on the backbenches and frontbenches of the South Australian, Western Australian, Tasmanian and Queensland Parliaments. And they ask more questions about trivial local matter than were quoted from the ACT Parliament by our apathetic correspondent on the op-ed page earlier this week _ and they do not have a local government function (like ours) as an excuse. So today (if you have not already voted) do so with some care. Today there are three elections.
The Follett-Carnell tussle (and enough has been said about that), the referendum, and the third election for minors and independents who will form the cross-bench. On the referendum, even if you are unsure of Hare-Clark, vote Yes not so much to entrench Hare-Clark, but to make sure that no bare majority of politicians in the Assembly can foist an new system upon us without the people having a say or at least having the agreement of two-thirds of the Assembly (which means both major parties). On the cross-bench, go beyond the bare five or seven preferences needed for a formal vote.
Inevitably a minor or independent will fill the last seat in each electorate, so this is the real contest today. You can have a say. Think about which minor parties are best for Canberra. Do we want a group of Greens dedicated to an international ideology first and Canberra second? Should Canberra be an experimental testing ground for that ideology? Maybe so. Maybe somewhere needs to lead an international movement to an ecologically sustainable age. Do the Moore Independents stand up to scrutiny? They have voted 40 per cent with the Liberals and 60 per cent with Labor over the past three years. Superficially it looks erratic, on the other hand it shows an issue-by-issue approach.
They helped oust Labor’s Wayne Berry after he misled the Parliament while still supporting Labor’s Rosemary Follett as Chief Minister. On the environment, Canberra’s main conservation group, the Canberra Conservation Council, said Moore (rather than a pro-forma nod to the Greens) performed best at their election forum What of the Raider Green, Paul Osborne? He comes across as naive, but is there a better cross-bencher from Brindabella? The tragedy is that while it has been trendy to be dismissive of ACT politics in the past three years, it has meant that a cross-bench _ the determinant of our legislative destiny _ will be elected today by a largely apathetic and ignorant electorate. We will get what we deserve.