Month: June 1995

While everyone is concentrating on the method of (ital) selecting (end ital) the Head of State, the single biggest change in the Keating Republic package is the method of (ital) removing (end ital) of the Head of State. At present the Prime Minister can phone the Palace and the Governor-General is gone. Under the Keating plan the President can only be removed by a two-thirds majority of Parliament. It is perhaps odd that a Labor Prime Minister, particularly one who was one of the Ministers dismissed by the Governor-General in 1975 should be proposing the slight strengthening of the position of the person who holds the equivalent office in the Republic. At present the Prime Minister has the upper hand on the Governor-General. Forewarned by the events of 1975, a Prime Minister would be set to dismiss any hostile Governor-General in the event of a constitutional crisis.

Under the Keating plan that would not be possible. This is the single biggest change in Keating’s proposal. It shows that at last, 20 years after the event, Australia cease to be haunted by the spectre of 1975 as something that defines political motives and the constitutional position of each of the major parties. But perhaps Australia is hung up on the events of 1975 unnecessarily. The experience should tell any Leader of the Opposition that it would be better to wait for a normal election than to force an early one and carry the debilitating taint of illegitimacy that Malcolm Fraser had despite his majority. Malcolm Fraser only had to wait 18 months for Government to fall into his lap. Dismissals and removals aside, Paul Keating sought to persuade Republicans as much as allay the fears of wavering monarchists last night. It was an appeal to the Republicans’ minds, more than their hearts. People’s hearts tell them they want to vote directly for the President. You hear them on talkback radio; they told the Republic Advisory Committee; you read them in the letters columns; they tell you face to face and they tell the opinion pollsters the same thing.
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Rates had moved far higher as an average per year under the four years of Labor than they would under the Liberals next financial year, according to the ACT Government. The Government issued suburb-by-suburb figures showing rates at 1991-92 and 1994-95 with percentage increases. The accompanying table shows those figures and the new figures for 1995-96. The Government is to increase rates by an across-the-board 4 per cent. There will be no new land valuations in 1995-96 so it means each householders will get an increase of exactly 4 per cent on last year’s rates _ fulfilling an electionpromise to keep everyone’s rates under the CPI.

The Opposition says it would in inequitable to move away from basing rates on current valuations. If there had been new valuations, rates would have gone down in some places and up by more in others to reflect values. This would have been more equitable. goes as blockline under rates table. The table shows average rates suburb-by-suburb. The percentage increase is between 1991-92 and 1994-95. The new average rates for 1995-96 are in the right-hand column. They are 4 per cent higher than the 1994-95 rate.

One of the keys to Gary Humphries’ proposal to virtually wipe the planning slate clean and start again depends on a change of Government at the Federal level.

There are too many political ties between it and the National Capital Planning Authority board for it to agree to it abolition. The board has had some good members with a great deal of expertise from time to time. But it has also had some appointments with strong Labor connections. And that is not likely to change in the future.

Under the Humphries proposal the National Capital Planning Authority and the Act Planning Authority would be scrapped and replaced with one Canberra Planning Authority. Its independent board would have federal and local board members and a chair who would be seen as a representative of neither.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_plan”

While architect of Medicare, Neal Blewett, basks in the glory of his Order of Australia, the past fortnight has revealed skimping on repairs and maintenance of the scheme that could be very costly in the long run.By any international measure Australia’s health system is very good, but it is in danger of becoming merely good and later, perhaps, mediocre.

It is not just a question of dealing with the aging population and the decline in private health coverage. It is a question of changing fixed ideological positions, attacking professional privileges and taking some courageous decisions about may engender short-term anguish for long term gain.

This week saw the fall-out from the Federal Budget decision to cut the number of medical graduates from 1200 to 1000. It threatens the clinical schools in Canberra and Darwin that are attached to the University of Sydney. Last week saw Opposition Leader John Howard affirm no change to the basics of Medicare.
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Lawyers, grandfathering and governmental weakness have moulded Australia’s media policy in the past decade and events this week show that nothing has changed.On Wednesday, the Opposition accused the Government of making mogul-specific media rules. It said the latest plan to have an absolute rule that no television proprietor could have more than a 15 per cent share in a newspaper in the same city was directed at Kerry Packer because he had offended Labor. Mr Packer is seeking to increase his 17 per cent share in Fairfax.

The Prime Minister Paul Keating denied this, saying the proposed change was merely to strengthen laws in place since the 1980s. And Communications Minister Michael Lee said that his latest proposals would not be set in stone “as the lawyers are always coming up with new ways to seek to get around the rules”. It is a Punch and Judy show of the disingenuous and the spineless.

Mr Keating’s statement is a convenient rewriting of legislative history. In 1992 his Government changed what was then a blanket prohibition against 15 per cent or more ownership of a newspaper by a television licensee. That absolute threshold was changed to an indicative threshold of 15 per cent which a licensee could go over provided he was not exercising “control”. “Control” was defined in a convoluted schedule to the Act of several thousand words. Small wonder that Kerry Packer’s lawyers could _ in the words of Mr Lee _ get around the rules. And he did, lifting his share in Fairfax beyond the 15 per cent mark. Spineless.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_leader30jun”

Publisher Ita Buttrose has a point when she says, “We have become so politically correct that we’ve become a nation of bores. The majority of us have been silenced by the frowns of the loud-mouthed minority groups.”

The germ of her argument was not that people should be encouraged to engage in rampant racist or sexist tirades. Rather she was pointing out that major business figures and some politicians were afraid to engage in any public discussion at all for fear of causing offence. Large areas of debate were beyond discussion by many people: multiculturalism; Aboriginal policy; environment; and women’s issues. The extent to which this is true can be debated. There is certainly no shortage of rednecks, but that is not the point. It would be a poor day for Australia if we became, as Ms Buttrose says, a nation of wimps when it comes to speaking out. The response to people who say things we disagree with is not to be offended and to ostracise the speaker, but to engage in further debate.

The disputes over line items of of the Budget are becoming an annual event. Gone are the days when the Opposition formally moved a $1 amendment to the Budget and the thing went through the Parliament. Now, Democrats, Greens and the Opposition in the Senate actively vote down key revenue items. They rarely, if ever, vote down expenditure items. The exercise is tainted with opoprtunism and populism and goes beyond the function of the Senate both as a states House or as a legislature and, it could be argued, goes against the spirit of the Constitution if not against the legal interpretation of the words.

As an issue quite separate from the Republic, the question of the powers of the Senate needs looking at. Twenty years after the events of 1975, the question can be looked at with more reason and less passion. There is no need for Liberals to argue for greater powers and for Labor people to argue for lesser powers. Rather the matter should be visited again on first principles. The spirit of the Constitution is to create government on the floor of the House or Representatives and for the Government through that House to be able to raise and spend money. It denies the Senate the power to originate or amend money Bills.

The Founding Fathers foresaw the American trick of Governments tacking on non-money matters to money Bills to stymie the Senate. The Constitution reflects that by insisting tax bills deal only with tax and that separate taxes are dealt with in separate Bills. They foresaw the trick of the Senate amending money Bills almost out of existence. But they could not have foreseen the events in Britain in 1911 when the House of Lords rejected a money Bill outright. If those events had occurred before the Australian Constitution had been drafted, no doubt the Senate would have been specifically precluded from rejecting money Bills.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_leader29jun”

It is clear that the present prohibition policy on narcotic drugs is not working. It is not reducing the number of addicts _ indeed it might be increasing them. It is not treating the health problems of addicts. It is making it more difficult for addicts to lead a reasonably normal life while they get off their habit. But worse than this, the prohibition policy has created a very high-price black market in drugs. The amounts of money involved are so large that they have corrupted a significant part of the law-enforcement structure. The Royal Commission into the NSW police force has shown the insidious, corrupting nature of the heroin trade. It turns addicts to crime to pay for their habit. It raises so much money for dealers that they can bribe police so they are not prosecuted. Stiffer penalties and drug seizures only seem to drive up the price and make the problem worse.

This week, however, evidence has come in that shows the community _ at least in the ACT _ is awake to the ineffectiveness of prohibition.

The Australian National University and the Australian Institute of Criminology reported after four years’ work on the risks and benefits of providing addicts with heroin. It recommended that a pilot study with a limited number of users be run first, before considering a wider program. They also conducted a survey on community attitudes to the trial. It showed majority approval. A majority believes it will result in less crime; less drug dealing on the streets; less police corruption; less spread of AIDS; and better health for addicts.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_leader28jun”

The appointment of a Government Reform Advisory Group by the ACT Government satisfies an election promise by the Liberal Party, but other than that is a complete waste of time. Mercifully, it will cost only $20,000.Kate Carnell said in the he lead-up to the election that government arrangements since self-government in 1989 had been cumbersome, costly and adversarial. A city council style would be more effective. Presumably, she picked up whatever remnant anti-self-government vote was around in the absence of Dennis Stevenson who had recognised by then that it was not enough to get him a 12 per cent quota. The idea has now served its political purpose and should be taken off the agenda as quickly as possible.

There is no merit in the councils proposal. Councils can be just as adversarial as a Westminster parliament _ witness a hundred councils around the country that have divided on party lines or developer-green lines. They can be more costly _ as the Brisbane experience shows. And they can be just as cumbersome an ineffective and equally likely to send the contents of the too-hard basket to committees. Of greater significance, the council system seems far more susceptible to corruption than the Westminster system with Ministers responsible to a Parliament and answerable at Question Time.
Continue reading “1995_06_june_leader27jun”

Rather than disagreeing with what Governor-Gener al Bill Hayden says but defend ing his right to say it, the con servative side of politics has both disagreed and said he had no right to say it.Mr Hayden’s comments on eu thanasia and same-sex mar riages have challenged the com munity, both for their content and on the question of whether the Australian Deputy (and de facto) Head of State should have made them.

One of the roles of an Austra lian Head of State, aside from the formal and ceremonial, is to somehow be an embodiment, symbol or representation of the Australian nation. That neces sarily means saying things be yond the trite.

Republic or not, the Australia resident de-facto Head of State is juxtaposed to the forceful single- issue minorities who sometimes get their way with MPs. MPs cannot afford to upset those mi norities because they will change their vote on that single issue, irrespective of other poli cy matters. For example, opin ion polls show consistently that people agree with tighter gun controls and a more liberal eu thanasia regime than current law provides.
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