Month: April 2002

Australian Rules Football fans are rightly outraged that their game is not being broadcast live free to air on Friday nights and that other games during the weekend also look like getting second billing to Rugby League.

But they are pointing the finger in the wrong direction when they blame the AFL bureaucracy, the almighty dollar and the preferences of the Nine Network.

The finger of blame should be pointed right where it belongs – at the Federal Government and in particular the Minister for Communications Richard Alston.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_tv rights for foum”

The Constitution is about the distribution of power. If you change the Constitution you change the distribution of power.

Now in its third term, the Howard Government continues to face a hostile Senate. Despite being elected three times, it still cannot get through the privatisation of the rest of Telstra and its changes to the unfair dismissal laws. And its proposed media-law changes are likely to suffer the same fate. The obstruction led to two suggestions in the past week or so by Liberals as the party held its federal council in Canberra. One was for four-year parliamentary terms. The other was to reduce the Senate’s capacity to frustrate government by allowing legislation rejected three times to be submitted to a joint sitting of Parliament – where presumably it would pass because a Government’s majority in the house of Representatives is almost invariably greater than its lack of numbers in the Senate.

Both proposals would increase in the power of the Prime Minister and the executive government. Voters are usually highly suspicious of proposals that increase the power of the executive or increase the powers of the Commonwealth. So you would expect these proposals to get defeated if put to referendum. Nearly all of the defeated XX referendums (out of 44) fit the category of increasing prime ministerial or Commonwealth power.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_senate powers”

The Labor Party seems to prefer prescription as the way to get more women into Parliament. The Coalition has preferred pre-selection on merit and through that the natural increase in the number of women entering Parliament.

It is important that more women get into Parliament, if the Parliament is to be truly representative of society. So, too, should it have more indigenous people and more people from non-English-speaking backgrounds. However, such ends should not be ends in themselves and much care should be taken about how those ends are achieved.

At the weekend, senior figures in the NSW Labor Party put forward some very tough affirmative action proposals to get more Labor women candidates in winnable seats. Labor has a target by this year of have women as candidates in at least 35 per of winnable seats. That target was set by the party’s national conference. At present women make up just 22 per cent of Labor’s NSW Lower House members. Federally, the target has been met, with 35 per cent of Labor Lower House members being women.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader30apr women mps”

The Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, has seen governments come and go in the past 14 years. As an independent officer answerable to the Senate, not the Government of the day, he provides an instructive insight into the balance of powers between the legislature and the Executive Government. In particular, he notes that Governments of both complexions get feelings or immortality when the get into their third or even second terms. It means they can neither remember nor envisage the frustrations of Opposition, so they fail to realise that the things they suggest in Government to attract more power unto themselves might one day in the future be the instruments of their own impotence and frustration as a Government from the other side takes the benefit.

And so Mr Evans warned against two proposals put up by the present Government to increase the present three-year maximum term to a maximum four-year term and to permit the overriding of a Senate blockage of legislation more easily. At present if the Senate blocks legislation it can only be over-ridden if the legislation is rejected twice and there is a double dissolution and an election for both Houses. If the legislation is still blocked after that it can be submitted to a joint sitting. Under recent proposals coming from the Coalition side, if legislation is blocked three times it would go to a joint sitting without the need for an election.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader29apr harry evans”

Both major parties are struggling with the fall-out from the recent High Court decision that leaves the way open for single women to have access to fertility treatment.

In the case, a Victorian doctor, John Bain, was presented with the dilemma of a federal law and a state law apparently contradicting each other. If he provided the fertility treatment to a single woman he might be in breach of a Victorian law banning such treatment, but if he did not give her treatment might be in breach of the federal Sex Discrimination Act which prohibits discriminating against people according to marital status.

Dr Bain took the Victorian Government to the Federal Court, but that Government was not active in defending its legislation, so the court ruled that the Sex Discrimination Act overrode the Victorian Act and Dr Bain could proceed with fertility treatment on a single woman. The Federal Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, gave the Catholic Bishops Conference permission in the form of a fiat to take the matter to the High Court to argue the case fully, but the High Court refused to upset the lower judgment because none of the parties to that finding had appealed and it ruled that it did not have the jurisdiction to rule in what would amount to a hypothetical case based on the action of a third party with no right, duty or liability at stake.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader28apr ivf”

The Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission may well have a point when it argues for a taxi industry free from economic regulation. It has recommended that in an ideal world anyone should be able to apply for a taxi or hire-car licence and get it subject only to an administrative fee (of about $7000) and a safety and diligence test.

At present it is a criminal offence to operate as a taxi without a government licence which is granted on a rationing system according to what the government assesses are the market conditions. The licences are very expensive, selling at auction for between $160,000 and $240,000 at recent auctions and for similar amounts when sold on the open market. The market price is not driven by the usual economic factors of goodwill and stock (the car itself) but according to an artificial value created by the Government restricting the number of taxis in the territory.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader24apr taxi”

The moderate people of France have probably been stunned by the first round of the French presidential election. Hitherto, it had been assumed that all the minor-party and independent candidates would be swept aside in the first round and that the run-off between the two leaders on May 5 would be between the mainstream centre-left socialists and the incumbent centre-right candidate President Jacque Chirac.

Instead the far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen caused an upset by taking second place from the Socialist candidate Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and earning the right to contest the second round against Mr Chirac. Mr Jospin has been Prime Minister since 1997 after the Socialists did well in parliamentary elections and he and Mr Chirac have been ruling the country together in an odd co-operative tension caused by the French political system under which the president is more than just the figurehead who nominates the person with the parliamentary majority as Prime Minister but an office with significant powers of its own.

French voters, it appears, have judged the past five years of Chirac-Jospin government harshly, despite a fair degree of evidence that Mr Jospin administered with dour competence. It was not so much his age – 64 – but the absence of any capacity to inspire. The previous Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand, was older than Mr Jospin, but he could fire the voters into enthusiasm. Perhaps Mr Jospin appears to compromise too much with the centre right to attract or keep loyalty.

Nor was it a great victory for Mr Chirac who topped the poll. He got just 19.7 per cent of the vote to Mr Jospin’s 16.1 per cent with Mr Le Pen between them on 17.0 per cent. The vote was able to fracture because there was a large field of 16 candidates. But that should not have mattered if Mr Jospin and Mr Chirac had been able to articulate to the persuade the average French voter that however appealing simplistic messages might be, they were not a panacea. So the voters went to the far right and the far left. Aside from the upsurge in support for the National Front, three Trotskyist candidates managed to take 11 per cent of the vote – votes that would otherwise go to the Socialists.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader23apr french poll”

The call by the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, for a national scheme for paid paternity leave is a timely one. The issue transcends questions of sex discrimination. It also involves questions of population policy and the health of women and children.

On the question of discrimination against women, it is not enough that women who go on maternity leave get their job back. If maternity leave is not paid, it means women might postpone the decision to have children and that women will get further behind men in the wealth stakes.

The question is not whether there should be maternity leave; but who should pay for it. Prime Minister John Howard argues that the matter should be decided on an enterprise level. “”Some enterprises can afford it and some can’t,” he said. That may be true, but it is looking at the question the wrong way around. A woman’s access to paid maternity leave should not depend on whether an enterprise can “”afford” it. That has resulted in some women getting the paid leave while others in similar circumstances not getting it, just because they happen to work for a different sort of enterprise. Affordability is a movable feast. It depends on the profit level that an enterprise seeks. One enterprise seeking a 20 per cent return on capital might argue it cannot afford the leave. A similar enterprise seeking a lower profit level might be able to.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader22apr maternity”

It is now just over a year since the 50km/h speed limit trial began is parts of some Canberra suburbs. Presumably there will be some sort of evaluation before a final decision is made. But results achieved in Victoria indicate that the case for making the change permanent is compelling.

A study by the Monash University Accident Research Centre showed a decrease in pedestrian injuries and deaths of between 40 and 46 per cent across the state and a decrease in overall injuries of 13 per cent.

The Monash study showed that a pedestrian being hit by a car travelling at 60km/h had a 70 per cent chance of being killed. At 50km/h the chance is cut to 40 per cent.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader21apr speed limits”

After six months of searching organisers have failed to find a sponsor for the V8 Supercar street race. The official launch is just a week away. The race is on over the June long weekend.

Ordinarily it would not matter much if the promoter of a special event failed to get a sponsor, but in this instance it is quite worrying. This is because the ACT Government has contracted with AVESCO the company that runs V8 Supercar racing to run the race for five years. This year is the third. If the contract is terminated prematurely, AVESCO would get a multi-million dollar pay-out, but the precise terms are unknown.
Continue reading “2002_04_april_leader19apr car race”