Month: March 2001

A spat broke out this week over whether the ACT’s Hare-Clark electoral system discriminates against women.

The ACT branch secretary of the ALP, Michael Kerrisk, said, “the Hare-Clark electoral system used here in the ACT, and the one chosen by the Liberal Party, is a brutal one. . . . Increasing at the level of female representation in the Assembly will not be easy. . . . The Hare-Clark electoral system is all about promoting the individual at the expense of the party. And in any system like this, female candidates will often be unsuccessful.”

At present, there are only two female members of the Legislative Assembly out of 17. And we do have a Hare-Clark system. But the latter, of itself, did not cause of the former.

This election, women were pre-selected by each of the major parties to every or winnable seat except one. The winnable seats for the major parties are two each in the two five-member electorates (Brindabella and Ginninderra) and three each in the seven-member electorate (Molonglo). (Only one major party will actually win a third seat in Molonglo, however, it is still winnable by either of them.)

The Liberal Party has pre-selected three women to stand in Molonglo, two women to stand in Ginninderra but only one to stand in Brindabella. That is six women for seven winnable seats.
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The difference between a rational expectation of an ordered world and blind faith that the world is ordered is a very fine one.

Every few seconds I was swinging between the two.

It was at Vail, America’s largest and arguably best skiing resort. And I was not skiing. There were other things to do than the standard day of skiing. For a start it was night.

Imagine an ordinary bicycle. Imagine someone taking off the pedals and throwing them away and then replacing each wheel with a short ski. And there you have a ski-bike. The rider wears ski boots each with a 30cm ski attached and uses them and the bicycle handlebar to steer. There are no brakes. Let me repeat that. There are no brakes.

Instead the rider negotiates down the ski-slopes like a skier, using turns to slow down and to prevent catastrophic crashes into the firs and aspen forests.

I haven’t finished yet. You do this ski-biking at night, armed with a miner’s lamp. There are no lights illuminating the slopes.
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The so-called master political tactician – John Howard – is making a hash of it again.

This week Labor maverick Mark Latham made a similar comment to one made in this column about a year ago – there is too much emphasis on “”the bush” and not enough on the outer suburbs of the major cities. Latham was representing his constituents in Gough Whitlam’s old seat of Werriwa in Sydney’s south west.

There are two aspects to whether enough or too much attention is being given to the bush or the outer suburbs.

One is whether the people there deserve the attention/neglect on the merits of their case. The other is whether the effort being put in by the political parties to the bush is the politically prudent thing to do – will it deliver the votes that count.

Latham’s very reasonable position is that the outer suburbs have too much unemployment, welfare dependency, infrastructure deficiency and so on and deserve better from the system. Moreover, they do not have organisations like the very influential National Farmers’ Federation to represent them to put the hard word on politicians so that they get attention.
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Friday Mar 30: leave Canberra 6.20am QF850

Sat/Sun April 1-2: Port Moresby. Markets. Harbour boat trip. Gregory’s place.

Mon/Tues/Wed April 2-3-4: Maybe daytrip dive out of Port Moresby with Timothy but staying at Gregory’s.

Thur Apr 5: Fly to Mt Hagen with Gregory and Timothy. Stay at Haus Poriman.

Friday Apr 6: Sepik River with Trans Nuigini Tours. Contact Reuben Waima email: travel@pngtours.com

Tuesday April 10: Back to Port Moresby.

Wednesday April 11-Sunday April 22: Fly to Alotau eastern PNG. Dive Charter with Cara, Timothy, Gregory, Gregory’s mate from Mexico, Cara’s boyfriend. Wayne and Lee Thompson (charterers) Contact: satellite phone from Australia ring 0145 117098 (good idea to ring around 2pm usually doing surface time and not on a dive then.
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ON THURSDAY the ACT code for planning comes into force.

Urban Services Minister Brendan Smyth says it will be “a giant step forward”. But the code is based on the latest version of the Australian Model Code for Residential Development (AMCORD) which might mean a small step forward for unplanned Australian cities suffering urban blight, but it will be a giant leap backwards for the planned bush capital.

The code runs to 103 pages. Moreover, to understand the likely effect of the code one has to compare it to the existing territory plan and the guidelines issued under it. That it doubles the quantity and complexity of the task.

The devil is in the detail.

The code declares the high-sounding intention “to provide safe, convenient, accessible and attractive neighbourhoods that meet the diverse and changing needs of the community .. . . promoting a sense of place through neighbourhood focal points and the creation of a distinctive identity which recognises and, where relevant, preserves the natural environment.”
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Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston needs to undertake remedial classes in technology. Following his abysmal display over digital television he is now continuing to pursue his flawed policy agenda on internet gambling.

In May last year, Senator Alston pushed through a one-year moratorium on internet gambling. He now wants to make that moratorium permanent. The initial moratorium was a prohibition, backed by legal sanctions, against anyone in Australia operating an internet site for gambling. At the time it was widely thought that this was just another exercise in political grandstanding to appease a vociferous anti-gambling lobby. It was thought that once the one-year moratorium ended sanity would prevail.

Not so. Instead, the folly gets worse. Rather than a total prohibition the government proposes to allow Australian gambling sites to deal with overseas clients but not Australian clients and it will allow a Australians to gamble with overseas sites but not Australian sites. The policy is flawed both technologically and socially. It is obviously geared towards the continual appeasement of a vocal group who rightly sees that there is a significant gambling a problem in Australia, but it is dealing with it in an ineffective counter-productive way.
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The ACT Government proposes to gazette tomorrow (Thur 29) a draft variation of the Territory Plan. It will be one of the most significant changes to the plan since it came into force nearly a decade ago. It will take the form of the introduction of a new code called ACTCODE.

The new code addresses of both urban infill in established areas and at the creation of new suburbs in greenfields sites. The code is based on the latest version of the Australian model code for residential development and it is part of a national program to establish best practice in the planning and design of housing. Residents seeking it to preserve the amenity of existing suburbs and people seeking excellent urban design and planning and should not start applauding.

The new code has quite a few good things to commend it with respect to the building of new suburbs. Most likely it will provide a higher standard of residential amenity, environmental sustainability, road widths and provision of private and public open space than is provided a in some of Canberra’s newer suburbs. It would not be difficult. The standards of those newer suburbs were probably below the national average so any application of a new national standard is likely to create improvement in Canberra. However, that cannot be said with respect to infill developments in older suburbs. The new code provides for lower standards on setbacks, higher building plot ratios and lower standards for private open space than exist at present. It may well be that the new standard would provide better in-fill rules in places like Sydney and Melbourne, for Canberra it would be a step backwards for residential amenity, ecological sustainability and private and public open space. And that is in comparison to the rather inadequate existing rules. In short, their new code is likely to tip the balance further in favour of developers and against the maintenance of the Bush capital.
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The deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Stephen Grenville, caused something of a stir late last week when he began to explain the causes of the current economic slowdown. He was at pains to point out that the Reserve Bank’s actions of 18 months ago to increase interest rates could not possibly have caused the downturn. He pointed out that interest rate changes, particularly those coming off a very low base, could not have had such a large effect. More controversially, he mentioned the GST in the same breath as the word slowdown.

Dr Grenville said that business confidence had been affected by a several sources of pressure on business costs and cash flow: the GST, exchange rates and oil. He said also that the transition to the GST had affected business confidence adversely on two counts: first, the general bureaucratic requirements and accounting changes and secondly the rescheduling of construction activity in the economy. Many individuals and businesses brought forward construction activity in late 1999 and early 2000 in the knowledge that the GST was pending. This meant a commensurate downturn in late 2000 and early 2001.
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