Crispin Hull

ACT Chief Minister Gary Humphries has put citizens’ initiated referendums back on the agenda. It had been very much on the agenda five years ago – – before Pauline Hanson rose to prominence. It was perhaps the beginning of the voter backlash against what was seen as the arrogance of government. Citizens’ recall and it citizens’ veto were also part of that agenda.

CIR is seen as a means of putting power in the hands of the people in the face of what is seen as uncaring or aloof government. Five years ago and the proposal was almost legislated in the ACT, only just missing out on the numbers.

Once again, it seems that CIR is being used to appeal to voters who feel that government is failing them. But in returning to this proposal, Mr Humphries seems to have misinterpreted the nature of voter disillusionment.

There is nothing much wrong with citizens’ initiated referendums. The details of the proposal worked out by the Liberal Party a couple of years ago seemed eminently workable. The argument against it – – that zealots would be able to get all sorts of lunatic schemes up – – does not wash. After all, 50 per cent of the voters have to approve a proposal before it becomes law. Surely, 50 per cent of the voters of the ACT are not zealots and lunatics.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_cir for forum”

Australians and New Zealanders will be driving on the right-hand side of the road within three years, according it to an agreement made by the Council of Ministers for Transport.

The change is to be made as part of the proposed US-Australia free trade agreement.

The council is made up of federal, state and in New Zealand Ministers for Transport. The Federal Government sought to have a public announcement delayed until after the federal election later this year. However, a copy of the agreement has been obtained by the The Canberra Times.

It is understood that US officials raised the question in talks on the free-trade agreement with the Australian officials and the Australian officials took the question on board. The US officials argued that there were questions of free trade involved.

The US position was that only if Australia and New Zealand drove on the right would there be complete freedom of trade in the automotive industry and industries associated with road construction.
Continue reading “2001_03_march_april fool”

Upmarket restaurant 11400 ft

Night sky. Groomed green light.

Beaver ck 200yo over built pretends to be Europe. Fairy lights one every small tree. 5-storey condos. Very rich (see RE ads) come here by skiiing is the great equaliser. Skiiinig ability has to be learnt, or partly comes naturally. It cannot be bought.

Odd scultures of 100 years ago or more. Lots of old and pseudo-old (as distinct from antique) furniture. Every painting seems to be an old master with dark brown wioth ornate gold frame. Trying to add age to a resort which is glaringly new and should be pround of it.

The Western Australian and Queensland elections have made some Coalition MPs ponder supping with the Devil. They are thinking of doing a preference deal with One Nation.

National De-Anne Kelly summed up the position: “”If you’re part of the same sort of conservative, right-wing family, if you don’t share preferences, you are dead in the dust.”

And the Liberal Member for Eden-Monaro, Gary Nairn, is making similar noises.

Hitherto, the importance of preferences has been grossly exaggerated, but next election it might be different, based more on the result in Western Australia than Queensland.

In 1996, preferences decided 50 of the 148 seats. In 1998 they decided 91 seats – an historically high proportion. In fact they made little difference. Of the 91 seats in 1998 the leader after the first-preference count stayed leader in all but three cases after the distribution of preferences. (This is counting the Coalition as a single party.) Still, despite the high number of seats determined by preferences, the preference count did not affect the outcome of either election.
Continue reading “2001_02_february_preferences”

AN ADVERTISEMENT the other day said something like, “Wanted. Dentist. etc etc.” And I thought, I don’t want to be a dentist, so I won’t apply.

Yet, there is an open advertisement in our democracy for anyone to seek elected office. And I saw in the paper the other day that someone wanted to apply.

But this person had a very peculiar view. The elected office was to be one of the 17 people elected by the 150,000 voters in the ACT. The job is that of politician. How surprising, then, that this person who wanted to be elected office to the job of politician said, “”But I’m not interested in becoming your typical politician.”

His name is Mal Meninga. He went into football and became a footballer, but wants to go into politics and somehow not be a politician. It is bizarre. If you stand for elected office, you become a politician. If you don’t want to be a politician, you should not stand.
Continue reading “2001_02_february_meninga forum”

National Party Senator Ron Boswell has taken a courageous stand against Pauline Hanson and One Nation. He has stated that he will put One Nation last on his how-to-vote cards. Senator Boswell, from Queensland, said he would put Labor, the Nationals traditional enemy, before One Nation. The move is not a hollow gesture. It could mean a Labor senator gets in ahead of One Nation.

Six senators, who were elected in 1996, come up for election at the next half-Senate election: 2 Labor, 2 Liberal, 1 National Party and 1 Democrat. At the last half-Senate election in 1998, One Nation got a seat in Queensland on first-preference votes, when the party was riding high. Now it might expect to need some preferences to get across the line, given that its vote has fallen since 1998 based on the Queensland state election and opinion polls.

If all major parties hold fast with a put-One-Nation-last policy, One Nation would likely not get across the line. For example, when that policy pertained in NSW at the last election, One Nation with two-thirds of a quota on first preferences lost out to a Democrat with just half a quota on preferences.
Continue reading “2001_02_february_leader22feb nats”

The 12-point accountability plan put by the Australian Democrats this week has much to commend it. The plan seeks to make politicians, political parties, bureaucrats and corporations more accountable and to make information more accessible.

The proposals are welcome in the light of recent rort allegations within the major parties and in the light of the Howard Government’s disillusioning performance in outdoing the Hawke-Keating Government when it comes to appointing mates and political allies to key statutory appointments and when it comes to conflicts of interest and abuse of entitlements. Unfortunately, the proposals suffer from a Catch-22. The very people they are directed at are the very people who will have to pass them into law.

Among the proposals were for greater internal democracy in political parties. Branch-stacking by parties has been rife for decades. And when Labor moved to stop it by requiring branch members to be enrolled on the electoral roll in the electorate, the stacking did not end. Rather people falsely enrolled in the electorate so they could still stack the branch.
Continue reading “2001_02_february_leader09feb dems plan”

The Israeli people want peace. They just don’t seem to know who to get it. The trouble is they want peace on their terms. Every opinion poll suggests a yearning for peace and a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. But every time an Israeli leader goes into negotiation, usually in the US, he has to worry about voter backlash. Inevitably, obvious and reasonable concessions to the Palestinians are not made. The Palestinians despair. Their leaders, too, worry about their political support. Violence erupts. Israelis and Palestinians on the street become more hard-line and peace, so close, becomes even further away.

It seems that every time Israelis elect a new leader the hawk of the election campaign becomes more dovish at the negotiating table and the dove of the election campaign becomes more hawkish as he realizes the prospect of electoral back-lash at re-election time. But either way, hawk or dove, no Israeli leader has been able to secure a complete peace agreement that sticks. Ultimately, the Israeli people are too fearful of the concessions it would take: acceptance of a Palestinian state; of a shared Jerusalem; of access to holy sites for all religions; and some concession about returnees.
Continue reading “2001_02_february_leader08feb israel”

Prime Minister John Howard should resist the knee-jerk reaction of his back-benchers to change in any significant way the quarterly Business Activity Statement. Anything new is bound to attract opposition. Anything new is bound to cause a certain amount of difficulty until the new becomes the routine. The BAS system has simply not had enough time to be bedded down to become routine. Businesses have only had to present two BASs, so business owners and their staff have hardly had time to familiarised themselves with the procedure. It would be like turning on a spreadsheet program on a computer and after giving it a couple of starts pushing it aside and returning to a calculator or manual adding-up.

Australia has one of the easiest financial reporting standards fior business in the developed world. Most require monthly reporting. The BAS is not especially onerous. Indeed, a lot of welfare recipients have to lodge forms not much simpler and more regularly. For too long much of Australian small business has slopped along with a shoebox attitude to accounting. The shoboax of receipts comes out towards the end of the financial year for the annual tax return. It is not good enough. The BAS has imposed some welcome discipline on small business. Many business have very little idea how they are travelling through the year. The BAS will help them track not only liability and credits for GST and income tax, but also profit and loss, outstanding creditors and the like. The requirement for quarterly reporting has made many businesses update their accounting procedures and the computing used to do it. Having come this far, the Government should hold out. The vast majority of businesses are coping well with the BAS. More than 90 per cent got the first one in on time and that is likely to be exceeded the second time around.

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Australian politicians from both sides of the political fence are consistent indeed in explaining Australia’s economic fortunes. When growth rates in Australia falter, external factors like events in the US or Asia are pointed to as the key cause for blame by those in Government (whether Coalition or Labor) and those in Opposition blame inept economic management by the Government. When growth and employment are up those in Government put it down to excellent internal economic management, while those in Opposition either deny it is happening or put it down to good luck or flow-ons from external factors. Thus the economic mutterings and explanations on the causes of the current economic must be taken with a grain of salt. Moreover, economic forecasting and explanations by politicians has to be seen in the light of the electoral cycle. The closer the election the more panicked the response.

It is fortunate, indeed, therefore that one of the main levers of economic management – setting official interest rates — is in the hands of the Reserve Bank, more particularly, the monthly meeting of the Reserve Bank Board. It will meet tomorrow.
Continue reading “2001_02_february_leader06feb inflation”