Month: October 1998

The table reveals how the Senate count went and how close it was.

After the count of the first preferences, a quota is struck of one-third of the votes plus one. If two candidates get that much, no other candidate can get more so those two are elected. The quota was 65,679 votes. Labor’s Kate Lundy got 83,090, or 1.265 quotas. She was elected.

The Liberal’s Margaret Reid was about 4300 votes (or 2.3 percentage points) shy of a quota. It was her worse vote in the seven elections she has stood in since 1983. In 1984 she got 31.9 per cent — the only other time she has been run to preferences.
Continue reading “1998_10_october_final senate count”

Section 51 of the Constitution provides that the Commonwealth Parliament has the power to make laws “”with respect to weights and measures”.

I have been reminded of this most mornings in the past three weeks around 5.30am when the sun has woken me up and Radio National has told me that it is a sensible 6.30am in Tasmania.

Like most urban dwellers light between 5.30am and 6.30am (two hours or more before work and business begins) is not as valuable to me as light after work hours.
Continue reading “1998_10_october_daylight forum”

People hate tax. They will attempt to avoid it.

And so thousands of Canberrans have forsaken pubs which have to pay full federal company taxes and full ACT rates and other levies and flocked to clubs which pay little federal or ACT tax and which serve cheap food and booze.

In theory a club is a group of people with a community of interest pursuing a worthy aim. Before poker machines, that was the case. They raised money from chook raffles and the like. Then poker machines were permitted in the ACT, largely because huge sums were going across the border to Queanbeyan.
Continue reading “1998_10_october_clubs for forum”

Impurities and inconsistencies abounded in ACT politics during the week.

The ACT is now the only jurisdiction in the world that supports shooting galleries and heroin on prescription, but makes it a criminal offence to put a flyer under a windscreen.

And the same man, Michael Moore, is the sponsor of both.

Also, we had the legislature performing the executive function of determining spending priorities by ordering that Downer Pre-School stay open.
Continue reading “1998_10_october_act pols forum”

The extraordinary Abbott and Costello defamation case has done a lot in the past week to bring the law of defamation into the hatred, ridicule and contempt it so richly deserves.

It may even be a catalyst for reform.

Hatred ridicule and contempt, of course, is one of the tests for libel. Did the published imputations bring the plaintiff into hatred ridicule and contempt? There are others: were the imputations likely to cause right thinking people to shun the plaintiff. Was the plaintiff adversely affecting in his trade profession or calling and so on?
Continue reading “1998_10_october_abbott costello defo”