Month: February 1998

The Aussie Rules Brownlow Medal and health insurance have a lot in common.

They are prize examples of foolish governments squandering our money for the greater glory of personality and ideology.

Both examples surfaced this week.

Let’s go to health insurance first.

In August 1996 the Government introduced its incentive scheme for low and middle income earners to join or stay in private health insurance.

It was a completely brainless scheme. Anyone with Year 10 arithmetic could work out on the back of an envelope how stupid the scheme was. The Government must have known, but it continued. And this week, the results of the Government’s folly are in.

It has spend $600 million on this scheme and still (as everyone out of government predicted) people leave private health insurance. Now only 31.6 per cent of the population have private cover. In the three months to December, 66,000 people left private funds.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_govt spending”

A referendum on the republic can still win with the elect-by-parliament model.

This is despite the polls saying people won’t have a republic on those terms.

This is despite large majorities in favour of a direct election.

And it is despite not being supported by both sides of politics.

Most commentators say that if a referendum does not get bipartisan support it will fail. This is a simplistic view of referendum history.

It is true that only eight of 42 referendum proposals have passed. But that is because the proposals originated within the Government and nearly all of the ones that failed were campaigned against by the Opposition.

In short, they were seen as power grabbing. And all of them were. They increased Commonwealth power at the expense of the states and increased the prime minister’s power at the expense of the people.

And the 8-42 record is a gross amplification of the propensity to vote No. Fully 20 of the 42 rejected propositions involved the Commonwealth seeking extra power in a small cluster of economic areas: monopolies, prices, incomes and industrial relations. And many were repeat questions.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_forum republic referendum”

The Southern Cross and the kangaroo have dominated the most popular flag designs in The Canberra Times flag vote which closed yesterday.

Readers were asked to vote for 109 flags presented by the voluntary non-profit organisation Ausflag.

The winner with 369 votes was the flag with the Aboriginal flag’s motif on the left and the Southern Cross on the right.

Second (300 votes) and third (234 votes) featured the flying kangaroo. Fourth (214) was green and gold with the Southern Cross. Fifth (204 votes) was the Southern Cross done with Aboriginal circle motifs and sixth (186) was the red and blue with a white kangaroo and the Southern Cross.

Then the vote fell away sharply.

Three of the nine flags from winning designs in previous competitions were in the top six.

The executive director of Ausflag, Harold Scruby, said just as the republican movement was taking a lot of time to come up with a single design to put to the people, it was taking time to get the right flag design.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_flag comp”

Labor’s Trevor Kaine is still in the race to get a seat and Labor’s Andrew Whitecross is not assured of winning his seat, according to scrutineers and an analysis of the way preferences are flowing.

The change comes because of the large number of major-party voters who voted for only five candidates or only seven in Molonglo, voting straight down the ballot paper in whatever order the Robson rotation system presented to them.

The ACT Electoral Commission issued no new vote count yesterday, but information from scrutineers and the analysis of preference flows reveals a different candidate position from late Saturday night, though the likely party make-up of the Assembly remains the same: Liberal 7, Labor 6, Greens 1, Moore 1, Osborne 1 and the remaining seat either going to the Greens or the Osborne group.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_count update”

The Electoral Commission cannot begin distributing preferences and over-quota surpluses until next Saturday.

This is because the commission cannot strike a quota until all the postal votes are in. The postal votes cut-off is not till midnight Friday, so the commission will not distribute until Saturday morning. That is when the next significant counting will take place.

Candidates in a doubtful position (most likely the last seat in Ginninderra and the last two in Molonglo and will just have to hold their breath till then.

The final result will not be known until Wednesday or Thursday next week.

This is because the Hare Clark system requires many distributions of preferences in each electorate.

The process starts with the determining of the quota. (One eighth of the formal vote plus one in the seat of Molonglo and one sixth of the formal vote plus one in the other to electorates of Brindabella and Ginninderra).
Continue reading “1998_02_february_count time”

LIBS in B’BELLA

Smyth

51

Kaine

18

Littlewood

11

Didier

3

Head

3

Undecided

15
Continue reading “1998_02_february_candidate order”

BRINDABELLA,ELLERMAN Sue,GREEN,54

BRINDABELLA,FARRELLY Peter,GREEN,0

BRINDABELLA,STEPHENS Liz,GREEN,0

BRINDABELLA,TITO Fiona,GREEN,0

BRINDABELLA,CARTER Stephen,CDP,19

BRINDABELLA,PICCIN Francis,CDP,0

BRINDABELLA,MOORE Linda,OIG,0

BRINDABELLA,OSBORNE Paul,OIG,192

BRINDABELLA,BELL Charlie,DEM,103

BRINDABELLA,DODD Geoff,DEM,0

BRINDABELLA,GRANT Anna,DEM,0

BRINDABELLA,PEIRCE Mark,DEM,0

BRINDABELLA,TATE Adele,DEM,0

BRINDABELLA,HARGREAVES John,ALP,539

BRINDABELLA,MOW Karen,ALP,0

BRINDABELLA,PRESDEE Kathryn,ALP,0

BRINDABELLA,WHITECROSS Andrew,ALP,0

BRINDABELLA,WOOD Bill,ALP,0

BRINDABELLA,DIDIER Geoff,LIB,476

BRINDABELLA,HEAD Margaret L.,LIB,0

BRINDABELLA,KAINE Trevor,LIB,0

BRINDABELLA,LITTLEWOOD Louise,LIB,0

BRINDABELLA,SMYTH Brendan,LIB,0
Continue reading “1998_02_february_act poll results”

The most decisive event of this ACT election campaign was on February 12, 1996.

If Kate Carnell retains the chief ministership, as is almost certain, it will be largely due to that event two years ago.

On that day she appointed sitting Labor MLA Terry Connolly to the judicial office of Master of the Supreme Court of the ACT, and he accepted.

If Connolly had stayed, there was a good chance that he, rather than Wayne Berry, would be Leader of the Opposition, taking Labor into this campaign. Connolly was a polished media performer, had no Vitab baggage and did not carry ideological and union commitment that jeopadised responsible government. In short he was all the things Berry is not and would have been electable.

As it is, he is presiding over crash and bash cases down the Master’s court while the Labor Party he left behind is huddled in ideological self-righteousness, remote from the people it was supposed to serve.

Wayne Berry is the Arthur Calwell of the ACT; the dogmatically pure but unelectable face of Labor.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_act poll eve op-ed”

Liberal Speaker Greg Cornwell is not out of the woods yet after a weekend of counting in the ACT election.

The further counting also confirmed that Labor’s Andrew Whitecross has virtually no hope of winning back his seat. A report yesterday quoting some scrutineers relied too heavily on his lead in the first preferences over Labor rival John Hargreaves. Counting of preferences yesterday and details of the way preferences are likely to run under the Hare-Clark system confirmed reports published earlier last week that Mr Whitecross needs a miracle to win.

The count also showed that the last seat in Ginninderra — a fight between the Greens Shane Rattenbury and the Osborne Group’s Dave Rugendyke is still too close to call.

The same can be said for the fight in Brindabella between the two Liberals’ Trevor Kaine and Louise Littlewood.

There are now four candidates formally elected with a quota: Kate Carnell (the only candidate to get a quota on the night), Gary Humphries, Brendan Smyth and Paul Osborne.

The Electoral Commission has completed the first preference count in all electorates and struck the quota in each one. Molonglo is 9458; Brindabella is 9042; and Ginninderra is 8406. The commission distributed the surplus of successful candidates and began the process of excluding the lowest unsuccessful candidates.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_weekend count”

The undecided vote has been swinging to the Liberal Party in the six days of Canberra Times-Datacol polling up to Wednesday, but a Liberal Government is by no means a certainty because support from minors and independents is in the air.

The undecided vote has been falling at the rate of one per cent a day.

According to the principal of Datacol, Malcolm Mearns, this means that about 20 per cent of voters will go into the polling booth today undecided.

Datacol went back to the sample it began with at the beginning on the month to gauge how the vote was swinging.

Indeed, many who began decided later replied they were undecided. Others swapped voting intention. The Liberals gained 10 points and lost 4; Labor Gained 4.6 and lost 5.2. Others were mostly steady gaining and losing roughly equal and small amounts.

The way the undecided go and the way preferences fall will largely determine today’s election.

The latest polling (as published yesterday) is repeated in the tables.

It gives the major parties two seats in each electorate, Osborne 1 and the Greens 1. The election will be decided on whether the Liberals get a third seat in Molonglo and whether the Osborne group gets a seat in Ginninderra.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_undecided”