Crispin Hull

The setting of the date for the election must be uppermost in the mind of Prime Minister John Howard. The over-riding consideration will be to maximise the chances of the Coalition retaining Government. Survival is a base instinct and it tends to be put at the forefront. The Government would happily cancel the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and send troops immediately to the Middle East if it thought that this meant the difference between winning and losing the election. Never mind the inconvenience to those attending and organising CHOGM. The convenience of the Government capacity to capitalise on the short-term visceral fear generated by a combination of the terrorist attack in the US and the Tampa refugee affair comes before everything else.

It is not a satisfactory situation. Parliament is also left to a guessing game. It is rushing through legislation on the presumption that this is the last sitting week, but it would be possible, though unlikely, for the Government to hold off until later in the year and for there to be another sitting. Businesses and people throughout the country are left in a state of uncertainty while the Government at its secret convenience determines when to have the election. It also maximises its advantage over the Opposition by knowing the date before the Opposition does so it can organise its policy announcements while the Opposition is left with an uncertain timetable.

Events this electoral cycle have highlighted some of the unfortunate consequences of leaving in the hands of the Prime Minister the virtually unfettered power to nominate the election date. Truce, the Governor-General must formally approve the date, but in effect the Governor-General would rubber-stamp the decision unless it was so radically early as to be democratically unjustified.
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Inequality is increasing in Australia, according to the latest study by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra.

But before there is a lot of hand-wringing and calls for Government to tax the rich more, the results need to be looked at more closely and the question must be asked: is equality a valuable outcome?

The study said there was strong evidence that inequality of income increased between the late 1980s and mid-1990s and some evidence to suggest it was continuing to increase. The increase was driven by a decline in the income share of the bottom 10 per cent, a small decline of income share in the middle and an increase in income share of the top 10 per cent.
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The decision by its former Raiders football star Mal Meninga not to stand for the seat of Molonglo at the October 20 Legislative Assembly election was obviously unscripted. It was apparent that when Meninga was being interviewed by ABC Morning Show host Chris Uhlmann yesterday that at first he ready to continue with the prepared script – the political spin. Then suddenly he reverted to his true self and said, “”I’m buggered. I’m sorry. I have to resign.” He walked out of the studio and returned a few minutes later, saying he that had decided on the spur of the moment he could not stomach a political career. He had tried to convince himself that politics was the way, but it was not.

He then said, “”Hopefully, I haven’t made a fool of myself. But I think I’ve done the right thing. I feel comfortable now . . . this feels right, definitely.”

Well, very few people in Canberra would say that Mr Meninga had made a fool of himself. To the contrary, they would be thinking that here was a man being true to himself and honestly assessing that he was not suited to the job. It is telling that he feels comfortable and right about his decision. The people now not feeling comfortable about the whole affair must be those who attempted to persuade him to enter politics, knowing that he had a very strong chance of election because of his well-justified popularity as a footballer, rather than administrative, organisational or other political abilities. Indeed, Mr Meninga’s career reveals a much greater talent for individual sporting prowess than ability to administer or coach a team. Those urging him to stand obviously hoped to translate the football prowess into a political number, dress it up as they might otherwise.
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Former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner came to Canberra this week with the laudable aim of redressing the gender balance in at the ACT Legislative Assembly. She came equipped with some money from a fund called Emily’s List to support female Labor candidate for the October 20 election. Alas, she also came with a sad ignorance about the ACT electoral system.

Mrs Kirner described the ACT’s Hare-Clark system of voting as “an amazing system” as if it were some sort of biological freak. She admitted that she was still trying to understand it. Moreover, she gave ridiculous advice to the very voters whose hearts and minds she was hoping to influence. She told them to vote 1 with no preferences. Besides offending the requirement to express five or seven preferences (one fore each seat), it is through the full expression of preferences that voters can best influence gender balance.

Mrs Kirner’s basic premise was sound. The ACT Parliament has an unhealthy gender imbalance. Only two of the 17 MLAs are women. In previous Assemblies there were more than double that and at one stage the ACT was unique among state federal and territory parliaments when at the Leaders of the Government and Opposition and the Speaker were all female
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Governments in Australia must realise that the mere attaining of a majority in one house of parliament does not give them the right to rule as a dictatorship. In a liberal democracy there are checks and balances which should it make governments accountable during the period of governance in addition to the ultimate accountability at election time.

This week, we have had examples at both Territory and national level of governments withdrawing from their duties of disclosure.

At the federal level, the clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, has highlighted how the second term of the Howard government has been more secretive than most of its predecessors. In the latest edition of Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice, Mr Evans noted that in the second term of the Howard Government one in five orders for government documents had been refused, a greater rate than previous governments.
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The Act Government is now officially in caretaker mode and the election campaign for the October 20 poll is officially under way.

Almost immediately, the Liberal leader and Chief Minister, Gary Humphries, sought to distance himself from the approach of his predecessor, Kate Carnell. In particular, he sought to distance himself from chasing big-ticket items – like Bruce Stadium and the V8 race – and he sought to emphasise all the Liberal candidates and what they can do for their electorates, making himself less presidential.

On the presidential front, Mr Humphries does not have to do anything to be less presidential. It is difficult to imagine an Australian party leader less presidential than Mr Humphries – with perhaps the exception of his Labor counterpart, Jon Stanhope. There is nothing wrong with being less presidential, provided the team members are up to it and do not require the leader to repair damage created from within.
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The Federal Government has made the correct decision not to bail out Ansett, but rather let it fall into receivership. The situation is difficult for the 16,500 staff, but that should be a temporary affair for most of them. As one staff member said, Ansett is a great airline, but it has been let down by bad management. It means that a buyer is likely to be found for the airline’s aircraft, on-ground infra-structure, rights of access to airports and what remains of its goodwill. If that happens, it is likely that shareholders will lose a considerable amount of money. But there is always an element of risk in the purchase of shares. The risks range from poor dividends because of poor profits or outright loss of capital because the venture fails.

In the case of Ansett, it is likely that that the administrators will be able to sell the airline as a going concern and save many of the jobs. The return to shareholders will be small.

The Government’s duty is not to pick winners, or in this case pick which losers it will bail out. Rather its job is to set reasonable regulations for safety, administer laws to prevent anti-competitive conduct and ensure employee rights are protected.
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The Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, is in danger of looking faintly ridiculous when he talks about Labor’s policy on the GST. For nearly two years, he has been talking about GST roll-back. Until this week, the details of that were unclear. Hitherto, Mr Beazley has spoken only of making the GST simpler and of making its impact fairer.

On the question of fairness, it seems that all Labor has got to offer is speaking about one or two motherhood goods or services and removing the tax on them. Labor had already mentioned sanitary items, caravan park site fees and charities. This week it was funeral expenses.

“Imposing a GST on funeral expenses is an unfair burden on Australian families, especially the elderly,” Mr Beazley said. “It is the equivalent of a death tax.”
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Unfortunately, it may be far too close to an election for Australian taxpayers to come out unscathed from the Ansett debacle.

The crisis has been triggered by two major factors. First, Ansett itself is losing more than $1.3 million a day, largely due to past poor management, in particular an inability to update its fleet. Secondly, its parent, Air New Zealand is also in strife. Air New Zealand’s strife has continued because Singapore Airlines withdrew from an earlier proposal to increase its stake from 25 per cent to 49 per cent. This increase in the capital would have flowed through to Ansett.

Ansett’s position has been made worse after comments from Air New Zealand’s acting chairman, Jim Farmer, that the future of Ansett was essentially in the hands of the Australian Government. That statement was at odds with the commercial reality that Ansett is the subsidiary of a New Zealand company.
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The trial of two Australians and six Arab foreign aid workers detained in Afghanistan on charges of preaching Christianity is causing justifiable international disquiet.

Much of that disquiet arises from the unpredictability of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the absence of the rule of law independent from the Government, and the huge disparity in possible sentencing, form a few days’ jail to public execution.

Further disquiet is caused by the fact that the offence they have been charged with has no equivalent in Australian law, and in Australia their conduct would be completely lawful. The Taliban law prohibiting freedom of religious expression is offensive and conflicts with Australian ideas about basic freedoms.
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