Journalism and other writing
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.
Continue reading “2004_04_april_namadgi with pics”
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.
Continue reading “2004_04_april_forum for saturday senate”
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.
Continue reading “2004_04_april_forum for saturday nsw taxes”
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.
Continue reading “2004_04_april_forum for saturday gay foreign marriages”
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.
Continue reading “2004_04_april_forum for saturday canberra”
Federal Attorney General Philip Ruddock flexed Commonwealth muscle this week in a worthy cause – uniform defamation laws.
He issued a discussion paper outlining Commonwealth proposals to use the broadcast, corporations and territories powers to pass a nationwide defamation law. Hitherto, the area had largely been seen as one for the states. With a Commonwealth law, the states would be left with only defamation by individuals; all the major media players would be brought within the uniform Commonwealth law.
The madness of the present defamation laws has long been apparent, most markedly in 1973 Justice Russell Fox of the ACT Supreme delivered his judgment in the defamation action brought by Prime Minister John Gorton against the ABC and journalist Maximillian Walsh.
It was over a fleeting comment on a current affairs program suggested that Gorton had ordered a denial to be issued to a story he knew to be true in order to discredit his Defence Minister Malcolm Fraser.
Gorton was no longer Prime Minister by the time the case concluded.
It was standard political stuff that should not have raised an eyebrow in a society that respected freedom of speech. But Australian defamation laws by and large require people to prove the truth of everything they publish at such vast cost in lawyers’ fees that chills even the richest media organisation. That law remains unchanged and its general anti-free-speech approach is likely to remain unchanged for the indefinite future.
Continue reading “2004_03_march_uniform libel laws”
The Commonwealth has the legal and constitutional power to overturn the ACT’s gay adoption law.
Whether it has power to ban gay marriages and gay adoptions throughout Australia is another matter.
The Constitution gives the Commonwealth power to make laws with respect to the Territories. Indeed, it made such a law granting the ACT self-government. So it can certainly make a law limiting the scope of that self-government. The Commonwealth Parliament could pass a law simply stating that the present gay-adoption law is void and the Legislative Assembly has no power to make laws with respect to gay adoption.
In 1997 when the Commonwealth overturned the Northern Territory’s euthanasia law, it also removed the ACT Legislative Assembly’s power to make laws on euthanasia. The constitutionality of that law was obvious. No-one bothered to challenge it.
The legal position is clear, but it is not good democratic practice to be forever looking over the shoulder of a self-governing territory and approving or disapproving its laws.
Continue reading “2004_03_march_oped gay marriages”
We had six kids in our family. In those days, ice cream did not come in large plastic buckets at little cost. It “wa’ loxury”. It came brick shape in a waxed cardboard container.
We could never carve the ice cream into six exactly equal portions without a major quarrel. Invariably the exercise would end with my father slicing it haphazardly with a spatula.
“I’m bigger, I need more ice-cream,” one sibling yelled.
Another replied, “I’m smaller I need more ice cream so I can grow.”
And another: “I did a job for Mum so I should be rewarded.”
I was reminded of these squabbles in the past couple of weeks as NSW, one of six states – not siblings – squealed as the Commonwealth Grants Commission wielded the spatula over the slab of Commonwealth funding to be dished out among the states.
“It’s not fair,” NSW squealed, “Why should Queensland get more ice cream than us. Even the fat cats in Canberra get more ice cream than us.”
Continue reading “2004_03_march_forum for saturday states finances”
It’s undemocratic. It is unnecessary. It allows foreign treaties to rule our lives. It will open the floodgates to litigation. It will allow criminals to roam the streets. It will allow the unelected judiciary to rule our lives. It will legalise abortion on demand and euthanasia. It will allow people to desecrate the flag. It will allow people to defame reputable people. It will cost too much.
These are some of the arguments of people who oppose Bills of Rights including the new ACT Bill of Rights which became law this week — the first Bill of Rights in Australia.
The new ACT Bill is based, by and large, on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Prime Minister John Howard has written to Chief Minister Jon Stanhope expressing his disapproval. He and others in the Liberal Party are worried that it will undermine the democratically elected legislature and that it is unnecessary because all our rights are protected anyway.
This week, especially, that argument smacks of hypocrisy. For example, the details of the US free trade deal which were at last made public, reveal some forcing to the legislature’s hand. One clause commits Australia to legislating to change the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme so US drug companies can get more loot. Another clause allows Australia to run a 55 per cent local content rule on free-to-air television, but if that percentage is ever lowered it cannot be increased later. It is called ratcheting down. It binds future legislative action. If, for example, the Coalition cuts the percentage, Labor cannot restore it later without unravelling the whole free trade agreement.
Continue reading “2004_03_march_forum for saturday rights bill”