Month: February 2001

THE tussle of wills this week between Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello was eerily similar to that between Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating.

Costello, like Keating, has (to use Keating’s phrase) his head down and bum in the air working on tax detail. Meanwhile, (again to use Keating’s phrase) Howard is out there tripping on television cables at shopping centres.

Costello seems to be suffering the same frustration as Keating. His leader is ready to undo his work at the slightest, transitory, popular backlash.

On the Business Activity statement this week, Costello defied Howard, at least initially.

Costello wants an efficient tax system and efficient small businesses. It means upsetting a lot of small businesses who have run their accounts out of a shoebox and slopped cash about without paying proper tax.
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Labor’s move this week to amend digital television and datacasting laws is worse than closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Because Labor provided the bullet to shoot the horse.

The horse is the fantastic opportunities that should have been available to Australians with the digital tweaking of the available spectrum. It could have, and should have, provided for five networks (the ABC, SBS and the three commercials) to have up to four programming signals each of standard digital definition, and perhaps half a dozen datacasters to provide (over the airwaves) super Internet services which would have included video quality services.

But no, the Government bowed to commcerial television interests. It canned the idea of any of the present networks offering four standard definition programs and instead ordered that all five netowrks must burn up all their spectrum in offering one high-definition signal (with a few add-ons so you can see the same sport from several angles and some extra text searching). This is good for the commercials because all their audience is concentrated, as now, into one programming and one advertising stream which is much cheaper and easier to deliver than four program streams of standard definition.
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It was sad to see a whole nation prostrate itself in adulation of a man who could hit a round piece of leather with a piece of wood.

Sure, he hit it very well. Better than anyone else, no doubt. But really, is this good cause for using phrases like “”the greatest Australian”, for stopping the national Parliament, for devoting more than half the night’s television news bulletins, for wrapping every newspaper in the country with pages and pages of tributes and so on?

And in all these hectares of words, there were precious few from the man himself. He did not contribute much to the great debates, at least publicly.

The adulation is puzzling. It is more than 50 years since he played a test match. That was pre-television, so there is not much vision of his performance. Sure, Bradman lifted the spirits of a few people during the Depression with his sporting prowess. Circuses and dance halls did the same thing.
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Bollards at Dairy flat.

Mid path bars on unlit path.. dings in every one of them. Then put reflector tape on them – more or less acknowledging they are a danger.

Path runs out.

Hospice.

Shclich Street maze. Too busy negotiating the maze to see traffic.

Crossing to boat shores – all should be zebra crossings with give way to pedestrians and cyclists. (it is not holding up traffic cos going to lake shore 25kms anyway and the danger is acknowledged by humps.
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Plane crash (in Canberra) kills four, the banner headline read in 27mm-high type on Monday. Underneath was a piocture that ran across the page. In the bottom right in type 4mm high rant he headline, “”Indian quake toll rises to 15,000”.

It invites the comment that The Canberra Times thinks that one dead Canberrans is equal to about 4000 dead Indians. But, for a change, we were not innundated with that comment.

I hope it is not because readers have given up caring to make comments about the paper. I suspect not because readers were quick to point out the misspelling of practice (noun), the “”your” instead of “”you’re” in the cartoon and so on.

Rather, I hope that the conclusion was not drawn because it was not warranted. For a start the tragic Indian earthquake had been the main article on Page 1 on Saturday, the biggest circulation day, when the death toll was still in the hundreds. So the samller items on Sunday and Monday were follow-ups, up-dating the toll. However horrible an event, as time goes on, its impact lessens. It is not as newsworthy so gets less prominence.
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Mal Meninga’s entrance into the local political fray invites a look at what might happen at the election due in October and some unintended weakness of the ACT’s version of the Hare-Clarke electoral system.

The ACT has three electorates: Molonglo (in the centre) with seven members; Brindabella (based on Tuggernaong) with 5 and Ginninderra (based on Belconnen) with 5.

The seven-member seat has a quota of 12.5 per cent (one-eighth of the vote). It means if you get 1.5 per cent of the first preference vote you get elected. Meninga is standing in Molonglo. In the two five-member seats the quota is 16.6 per cent one sixth of the vote). It means if you get 16.6 per cent of the first preference vote you get a seat.

In fact, minor-party candidates and independents rarely get a quota on first preference votes. Successful minor candidates (by minors I mena independents and minor parties) usually require preferences from eliminated candidates – both minors and major-party canidates. Bear in mind the majors always stand a full complement of five or seven in each seat and only two or three are successful.
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