Month: September 1998

Iam on the Very Slow Train from Canberra to Sydney.

Will it be discovered as an endangered industrial species, its habitat threatened by the Very Fast Train which has adapted to world of the nine-second sound grab and the mobile phone. It is being hunted to extinction by bus companies that offer a better price at $9 one way to Sydney and airlines that offer a 45-minute journey.

Can it, like the pygmy possum nibble a continued existence along the narrow corridor through Queanbeyan (7.16am), Bungendore (7.24am), Tarago (7.51am), Goulburn (a nice round 8.15am for a big city), Bundanoon, Mittagong, Bowral, Strathfield arriving at Central on time at 10.53am? Or will is sway like a brontosaurus to extinction?
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ACT Liberal Senator Margaret Reid is on a knife edge, according to a Canberra Times Datacol opinion poll.

The poll gives Democrat Rick Farley a chance of causing an upset by taking the second ACT Senate seat from the Coalition, but much will depend on preferences.

Since the territories got Senate representation in 1975 the Coalition and Labor have always had one Senate seat each in each of the territories. In the past six election, Senator Reid has only had to rely on preferences once, in 1984. Usually she gets the quota of 33.3 per cent in first preferences.
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Even presidents need privacy, we were reminded by President Clinton the other day. Professor Thomas Nagel of the New York University was quoted as saying, “”Each of our inner lives is such a jungle of thoughts, feelings, fantasies and impulses that civilisation would be impossible if we expressed them all, or if we could all read each other’s minds. Just as social life would be impossible if we expressed all our lustful, aggressive, greedy, anxious or self-obsessed feelings in ordinary public encounters, so would inner life be impossible if we tried to become wholly persons whose thoughts, feelings and private behaviour could be safely exposed to public view.”

Even Clinton, who is a public figure who sought public office and therefore the publicity that comes with it, should have some right to keep private those things which do not impinge on his public office.

But the law, at least in Australia, does not recognise this. There is no general right of privacy.
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We hear a lot of rhubarb about preferences. In 1996 and 1993 they did not matter much. Indeed, the usually do not matter much, and their importance grossly over-stated. This is largely because the very freak circumstances in the 1990 election have taken on mythical proportions.

Nonetheless, yesterday both leaders appealed for the preferences of those people intending to vote for One Nation, imagining that it could make all the difference.

But what is the history? Out of 148 seats contested at the last election only seven results were changed because of preferences.
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Apaper seeking comment on defamation law in the ACT is now before the public. In putting the paper, ACT Attorney-General, Gary Humphries lamented that 30 years’ effort by politicians, lawyers and media to agreed on a uniform reformed defamation law reform had come to nought. They have only ever agreed on one thing: the present system is grossly unsatisfactory and should be reformed.

Mr Humphries has rightly identified the core problems: the defamation law is so complex that only the very rich can afford to seek redress against bad journalism and that when they do seek redress the law tends to favour reputation against free speech and public information; that the remedy under present law is large damage awards years after the publication; that the courts have no power to give effect to the preferred remedy which is prompt correction and apology for bad publication. Mr Humphries further highlights another grave defect of the present law: that there is no remedy for breaches of privacy by an overly intrusive media.

It is one thing, however, to state the problem. It is another to get the solution right. Responsible media in Australia would have little problem with a new tort of breach of privacy provided it went hand in hand with significant reform of the defamation law reform. At present only those legally funded or those who are very rich can afford the risk of a defamation action. This is a damnation for media organisations. When the legally funded or very rich sue the courts and the law are invariably weighted in their favour. Invaribaly the media are put to the onus of proving the truth of what they publish. It sounds a reasonable test, but when one considers, for example, that the inquest into the hospital implosion has had 100 days of sitting to find the truth and is no closer than on Day One, it can be easily demonstrated that such a test is a prohibitively expensive lawyers’ field day that achieves very little for publisher or complainant and the costs of which are invariably passed on to the consumers and advertisers of media products.
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In two weeks’ time Australians will go to the polls. A lot has been compacted into the past three weeks of the official campaign and the earlier weeks of unofficial campaigning when the Government parties, with the resources of the Government began the phony campaign with the launch of their tax package.

In the next two weeks the eyes, hearts and brains of the people of Australia are gong to be increasingly focused on the election. People who take little interest in politics will begin to take an interest as the day draws when they must vote. The danger is that in this period isolated incidents which have little to do with the major policy differences between the parties can gain an importance out of all proportion tot heir real substance. Any minor mistake in the days close to polling day unfortunately gets exaggerated importance. Voters should try to avoid allowing them too much influence.

An example appeared this week with a very silly press statement by Labor’s shadow attorney-general Nick Bolkus. The statement attempted to lay a the feet of Prime Minister Howard blame for deaths through heroin overdoses. The argument ran that Mr Howard had cut funding to the Australian Federal Police and Customs who otherwise might have been able to prevent some heroin being imported. It asserted that the extra heroin had flooded the market and lowered the price. It was a very long bow indeed, verging on the absurd.
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One thing became very clear by the end of Sunday night’s debate between Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley: there should be another debate.

At a time of ever shorter sound and vision bites, it has been very difficult for viewers to get a good view of the two leaders. It is an enormous paradox that in the age of electronic broadcasting that fewer voters get a rounded view of their leaders than, perhaps, in the days of the public meeting and extensive press reports of the substance of what was said.

Perhaps only 10 or 20 per cent of voters are interested in a hour’s debate. That should not preclude it. Those 20 per cent probably contain a large proportion of swinging voters in whose hands the election result rests. If the commercial channels do not like the idea of taking a ratings bath, the debate can go to the ABC.
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Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer souded a touch hypocritical on Monday when he called for the House of Representatives to be extended to four years. His leader Prime Minister John Howard had only the day before shaved six months of his three-year term to go to the people.

Mr Fischer argued that governments be given more time to implement their agendas. The argument does not sit well with what Mr Howard has done. Mr Howard seemed more pre-occupied in taking advantage of conditions now rather than having to face the possibility of them deteriorating as the normal three-year term ends. It is a dilemma faced by every Prime Minister: to go early while conditions are good or wait and risk being forced into an election in an unfavourable climate as the term expires.

Mr Fischer is right in one respect: the Australian election cycle is too short. We have too many elections. And given the number of state elections, in which federal politicians inevitably become involved, Australia averages an election every five months. It is bizarre. It results in far too much short-term vision and not enough long-term vision. It is true that Australians do separate state and federal issues, nonetheless there is still interaction as witnessed by Mr Howard’s intercession in the recent Tasmania election, promising $150 milion in debt relief if Tasmania privatised the Hydo-Electic Commission — a policy position of his Tasmanian Liberal colleagues, but not the Labor Party. It was a partisan action to help his mate. Fair enough, but it illustrates the point that too much policy is made on the hop because of imminent elections in Australia.

However, the solution is not that proposed by Mr Fischer. Mr Fischer wants a four-year maximum terms for the House of Representatives and and eight-year term for senators, with half being elected every four years.

This has several difficulties. The first is that many people would think that eight years is too long a term for senators. It makes the position more a numbers-game sinecure than a job of representation with accountability. The second is that it does not overcome the problem of the present system that enables the Prime Minister to call an election more or less when he wants to suit his own political advantage. The Prime Minister would still face the dilemma of whether to go early or wait the full term. A greater difficulty is record of referendums to change electoral cycles. Six referendums that proposed changes to the Senate’s electoral cycle have all failed.

A better solution would be to leave the Senate alone, and rather change the House of Represenatives terms to synchronise with it. It would mean a fixed three year the term for the House of Representatives, with a fixed election date. Perhaps it could be the first Saturday in December, or the second Saturday in March, which have been common election months.

It would be even better if all state elections were held on the same day.

It would create greater certainty for business and allow much mroe certain planning for the huge number of people in Australia who one way or another are involved in elections, including the whole of the public service.

Of course, there would remain the question of what to do when there is a clash between the House of Representatives and the Senate. At present the Senate has power of the money supply to the Government which is created in the Hosue of Representatives, but the Prime Minister has power over a Senate that blocks his legislative program. Those powers should be rearranged. The Senate should lose its power over supply and the Prime Minister should lose his power to call a double dissolution. Rather blocked Bills should should return after the next election when they could be passed by the House of Representatives alone.

The Senate would become a genuine house of review with powers to delay bills up to three years, but not to block them forever, particularly after they have been on the table through an election period.

Much of this, of course, is pipe-dreaming, because ulitmately, the Prime Minister controls the initiating process for referendums, even if the people control the ratifying process. No Prime Minister is going to inititiate something which will take away some of his power to manipulate election dates to get an advantage, however good it might be for the country. We only have to witness the timing of this election. He cynicism of the timing of the Coalition’s tax package and the subsequent election reveals the desire of the Prime Minister to escape scrutiny. The five-week election period co-incides with school holidays, the Commonwealth Games and the football-finals season. These will provide distractions, perhaps.

The calling of this election unnecessarily early reveals defects in the system. It is absurd, too, that the senators elected on October 3, will have to wait nine months to take their seats. Whatever democratic opinion is expressed on October 3 it should find its way into the institutions much sooner than that.

By October 3, Australia will have had 12 elections in 26 years. And average of one every 26 months. It is unnecessarily destabilising. Most of the trouble has stemmed from the Senate being able to block Supply and to block Bills with only a double dissolution to unblock the situation. This election and the history of elections since 1972 puts the lie to those who say the system ain’t broke so don’t fix it. The system is at least partially defective and in need of a tune-up. Mr Fischer apparently agrees, but he proposes the wrong solution.