Month: April 2004

Australian elections are usually very close.

Last election the Coalition won 50.95 per cent to Labor’s 49.05 per cent, on a two-party preferred basis. That, is after you distribute all the preferences from voters who voted for minor-party and independent candidates. In 1999 the Coalition managed to win more seats even though it polled fewer votes than Labor: 49.08 per cent to 50.92 per cent on a two-party preferred basis. A similar thing happened the other way in 1990. If just a few votes in a few seats change hands, the destiny of the nation changes, too.

Even when the difference in the number of seats won by the main parties indicates a landslide, their popular vote is still quite even – rarely more than a few percent apart.

So it is difficult to say what might tip a political party over the line.

In these circumstances the ABC’s Lateline host Kerry O’Brien should have been less off-hand when he said during an interview with Opposition Leader Mark Latham: “When it comes to the crunch, supporting a republic isn’t going to win you the next election. It’s much more likely to be bread and butter issues like tax, isn’t it?”
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Labor’s plan to slash the National Capital Authority has ACT Ministers and officials rubbing their hands with glee. Developers are also quietly chortling.

The people of Australia and the people of Canberra, however, should be mightily concerned.

Labor plans to restrict the NCA’s role to the Parliamentary Triangle and the Australian War Memorial. It argues that a wider role would result in unnecessary duplication and that ACT authorities answerable to the ACT electorate are capable of doing the job.

But the national elements of Canberra are more than the triangle and the Australian War Memorial. These wider elements are not the property of just the people of Canberra; they are the property of all Australians. They require a national body with planning expertise answerable to the national parliament. A local body answerable to only the local Parliament and voters can easily ignore national questions to the detriment of the broader Australian community which has an interest in the national capital.

One of the best examples came on the very day that Federal Labor announced its plan to slash the NCA. The ACT Supreme Court halted work on the Gungahlin Drive Extension.
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Creek: Booroomba Creek flows clear and clean despite the fire and drought.

Creep: A hardenbergia native creeper grows up the blacked trunk of a eucalypt.

Sapling: A eucalypt sapling that germinated after the fire starts new life amid blacked soil.

Weeds: A plethora of small plants sprout amid light created after the fire destroyed nearby trees.

Rejuv A and B: Eucalypts sprout new buds from their trunk.

Namadgi National Park is showing good signs of recovery after the worst fires in 60 years and worst drought in a century.

The recovery is showing the classic signs of rejuvenation of a eucalypt forest after fire.

The fire destroys all the leaves and the extremities of smaller branches. This is the active part of the tree which before the fire produced a hormone that prevented buds from sprouting along the trunk and boughs. After the fire the hormone can no longer be produced so the tree sprouts from the trunk and the major boughs. Eventually some of these will dominate and the lesser ones die and the tree will return to its normal look. Any dead branches will fall off.

In some places the fire kills the trees. Here native (and non-native) weed species and smaller plants quickly sprout, using the nutrient ash. So do the seeds of the acacia and large eucalypt species, triggered by the fire. In the absence of larger trees the new trees will grow and crowd out the smaller species so the eucalypt forest eventually returns.
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Labor may rue the day it did not do a deal with the Coalition on resolving deadlocks between the Senate and the House of Representatives.

On current polling Labor is likely to win the next election. Most of the attention has been on the House of Representatives. But if Labor wins, again on current polling, it will face a hostile Senate. It is likely to face a Senate in which the more inflexible Greens – not the Democrats — have the balance of power. And if the Coalition wins it is likely to face the same prospect.

In the present Senate, the two Green senators have little power as a voting block. Whether they side with either the Coalition or with Labor they still do not form a majority for passing or blocking resolutions without the addition of some Democrats or independents.

The Democrats, on the other hand, can pass or block if they side with the Coalition.

After the next election, this is likely to change. The Greens will be calling the shots.

Putting aside the (remote) possibility of a double dissolution, recent polling suggests the Democrats will lose their pivotal position. True, the Government can cobble a majority with just the four independents, but the bulk of legislation passed in the face of Labor opposition in the present Parliament has gone through with the help of the Democrats.
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When the then Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen abolished death duties in the 1970s all other jurisdictions followed.

Ever since, they have had to find ways of replacing death duties. Invariably, the replacements have been of a similar ilk – imposts when large assets are transferred. The Feds call it capital gains tax and the state call it stamp duty.

This week NSW imposed a new one: a stamp duty on the sale (as distinct from purchase) of investment property. It also widened its grab of land tax, though it has still not caught up with the ACT’s land tax which is the highest in Australia for the bulk of properties.

The NSW move seems like the response to an engineered crisis following the Commonwealth Grants Commission’s carve up of the GST revenue in a way unfavourable to NSW.

The new NSW taxes both affect Federal revenue. They are directed (with minor exceptions) to people who rent property. These people can claim the new NSW taxes against their Federal income tax. Most of these people are on the top marginal rate, so half of the NSW revenue will come indirectly out of Federal tax coffers.

The new taxes were announced quite quickly. The announcement of the new stamp duty lacked some critical detail. The 2.25 per cent tax will phase in when a property is sold for more than 12 per cent above the price for which it was originally bought. After 15 per cent the full 2.25 per cent will apply. And the 2.25 per cent applies to the full purchase price, not just to the profit once one sells for a profit of more than 15 per cent.
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Making marriage the exclusive domain of couples comprising a man and a woman might be more difficult than Prime Minister John Howard imagines.

He indicated the intention of his Government to do just that this week.

“The proposal simply would be to insert a definition in the Marriage Act, which gives formal expression to what most people regard to be the case and that is marriage as we understand it in Australia is between a man and woman,” he said. “This is not directed at gay people. It’s just directed at reaffirming a bedrock understanding of our society.”

But it is not so simple. It is a legal, constitutional and political minefield.

Marriage is not generally defined in the Marriage Act 1961. Everyone just assumed it was the union of a man and a woman. Marriage is only referred to only once in the Act as the union of a man and a woman. And that is in the form of words that a civil celebrant must use at the ceremony. But that has no legal bearing on the sex of the couple taking part in the ceremony.
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Canberra has a conformity conundrum.

Why do so many people think that Canberra has to be the same as everywhere else?

Many Federal politicians say Canberra is not the real world. Former Opposition Leader John Hewson threatened to move the Treasury to Sydney – to the real world. But the Treasury working out of unreal Canberra in the 11 years since has done an unreal job of managing Australian prosperity.

Churlish MPs bemoan Canberra’s neatness, cleanliness, excellent roads and parklands. It should be more like real Australia, they argue. It should have more squalor and mess, is the implication.

Yet while at once saying Canberra is too different they argue that it is bland, without life and contains too much suburban conformity.

Roger K Lewis, professor of architecture at the University Maryland, has fallen for the conformity conundrum. He says Canberra has too much parkland; it needs more buildings, more density and more people. In other words, it should be like Washington and other cities. Yet he damns Canberra’s conformity. Its buildings are inoffensively bland (except for the museum), he says. Well, Sydney’s buildings are inoffensively bland except for a bridge and an opera house.
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