Month: August 2006

In the evening of 13 September, 1897, the Premier of the Colony of Western Australia, Sir John Forrest, got to his feet at the Constitutional Convention in Sydney and moved that the word “three” in Clause 40 of the proposed Commonwealth of Australia Bill be omitted and in its place the word “four” be inserted.

In support of his motion he spoke just 123 words. There was no seconder and no other speaker. The motion was lost on the voices.

His proposal, of course, was for four, rather than three, year terms for the House of Representatives, proposals for which have been mooted on many occasion in the ensuing 109 years. The most recent was tossed out this week in a method as dismissive as the convention’s treatment of Forrest’s motion.

And so the now Section 28 of the Constitution reads: “Every House of Representatives shall continue for three [not four] years from the first meeting of the House, and no longer, but may be sooner dissolved by the Governor-General.”
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 26 August 2006 four year terms”

There it was, tucked away right down the bottom of the ACT Government’s umpteenth proposed revision of the planning system. You know, the one that embraces all the buzz words: “certainty”, “efficiency”, “residential amenity”, “sustainable development”, “environmentally friendly”, “stakeholder input”, “transparency” etc.

Just above the clause about rights to extract minerals – critically important for the vastly expanding ACT mining industry – is Clause 372 of the new blueprint for ACT planning, the Planning and Development Bill 2006.

It is a clause which says that anyone applying for, or objecting to, a planning application may ask that all or part of their application be excluded from the normal rule requiring publication and that the “planning and land authority may approve or refuse to approve the exclusion application”.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 19 August 2006 secrecy”

John Howard may well only retire after he has beaten Robert Menzies’ record (unless he is thrown out by people or party beforehand). But whenever he retires, I cannot imagine him doing what Menzies did shortly afterwards.

Menzies was invited by the University of Virginia to give seven lectures on Central Power in the Australian Commonwealth.

They show Menzies as a nation-builder rather than a mere exerciser of power for its own sake.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 12 August 2006 telstra”

In 1940 Adolf Hitler predicted that the aerial bombardment of British cities would result in the bulk of the population being “incited against the rich ruling class to bring about a revolution”. Britain would not be able to resist invasion after the bombing.

In 2006 the Israeli Government thought that bombing infrastructure used by Hezbollah in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah’s kidnapping of Israeli soldiers would result in ordinary Lebanese people being so incited against Hezbollah that they would throw it out of the country.

Both were wrong, of course.

In 1940, one of the tasks my father had, as a clergyman in his early 20s, was to hold burial services for the body bits found on bomb sites in East London. Far from joining a revolution against the ruling classes, after the Blitz he enlisted in the Army.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 5 August 2006 bombing”