Crispin Hull

Year after year the same cry goes out. Too many people getting gongs for just doing their job. Too many top gongs going to people in top jobs. Too many ex-politicians. Too many sportspeople. Too many volunteers in the bottom rungs of the gong list. Not enough women, except in the bottom rungs of the gong list among the volunteers.

And it never changes.

Every year, hand-wringing is done calling for changes

The awards go: companion, officer, member, medal. Getting the medal were those working, usually as volunteers, among the down and out – people working for nothing or next to nothing with little help and few resources. The companions and officers went to people paid perfectly good salaries for doing their job – people who were already getting a good share of life’s riches: high pay, interesting work, plenty of subordinates to do the menial tasks, power, air-conditioned offices invitations to glittering functions, and even gold medals in their field.
Continue reading “2001_01_january_gongs forum”

John Howard may well describe the Liberal Party as a broad church, but God help you if you are on the wrong side of the nave. Or should that be knave?

The past week has seen a further break-out of ideological warfare (or at least skirmishing) in the Liberal Party. There were two sources of the skirmishes. One was a statement by retiring MP Michael Ronaldson that Peter Costello was the natural successor to John Howard. The other was the Young Liberals’ conference in Canberra condemning former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and an equivocal speech by newly appointed Cabinet Minister Tony Abbott defending Fraser, much as Mark Antony defended Brutus. In doing so, Abbott referred to the broad church, while smugly sitting on the right side of the nave.

Ronaldson’s remark on its face was remarkably unremarkable. Ever since the Telecard affair damned Peter Reith’s chance at the leadership – if there ever was one – it was obvious that Peter Costello was in the box seat. So why would any on-record formal statement by a retiring back-bencher to that effect be of any moment? Well, because every leader prefers two or more leadership aspirants, rather than one. Two or more cancel each other out. Reith and Costello cancelled each other out. When both were in the game, it was seen that they would only fight it out after Howard voluntarily decided to quit. If only one were in the game, Howard might not have the luxury to deciding when to quit. There would be a challenge.
Continue reading “2001_01_january_forum libs”

The race to fill former Chief Minister Kate Carnell’s Legislative Assembly seat was throw wide open yesterday.

Until now the presumption was that Liberal Jacqui Burke would win the seat. But after close of counting yesterday, Liberal John Louttit is well ahead.

ACT Electoral Commissioner Phil Green issued figures at the close of the count yesterday with Mr Louttit on 6487 votes ahead of Mrs Burke on 3736 with Labor’s Marion Reilly next on 240 and the other seven candidates each this less than that.

Mr Green warned that these votes “”are not necessarily representative of the votes still to be counted and the relative order of the various candidates may change after further counting”.

Mr Louttit said yesterday, “”I didn’t go into this just for the fun of having my name in there.”
Continue reading “2001_01_january_count back news”

Imagine coming across in the wild a very large number of animals – together they might cover an area as big as an office carpark. In those circumstances, you would either flee in fear of the animals, or the animals would flee in fear of you.

That is, unless you are underwater and the animals are corals.

Most corals are like a like triffids in reverse. Instead of walking plants, they are stationary animals, at least most of the time.

They are exceptionally varied, diverse and beautiful. They are also threatened.

Only with the advancement of scuba diving in the past 30 years has the study of corals been possible in any great detail, though naming of species has been going on for at least two centuries. But barely have we had time to study, classify and understand corals in any detail and we are destroying them at an alarming rate. It has happened in our lifetime.
Continue reading “2001_01_january_coral reefs”

Australia’s capital was conceived in acrimonious jealous, born in secrecy and was under-nourished for the first half-century of its life. Now it is one of the great creations of human endeavour.

In the 1890s the vision of federation spread across the continent. At that time, the question of a capital for the future federated colonies was hardly on the agenda. By the end of the decade it threatened to wreck the whole project.

At the constitutional conventions in 1890 in Melbourne and 1891 in Sydney the big questions were financial. NSW, the mother colony, was worried about having to pay the way of less prosperous colonies. Federation was much more popular in Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia than NSW. NSW wanted free trade and did not want too much regulation of the labour force. Victoria wanted protection for its manufacturing and strong federal powers over arbitration of working conditions.

The early drafts of the Constitution which arose from the unelected 1890 and 1891 conventions merely said that it would be a matter for the new Federal Parliament to determine where the federal capital should be, though the then anti-federalist William Lyne attempted to sow discord by suggesting that the Constitution should fix the place of the capital.
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The replacement for retiring Member of the Legislative Assembly Kate Carnell has been chosen – the Liberal party’s Jacqui Burke.

Was the method by which she was chosen the best and fairest?

There are three methods of replacing retiring members of Parliament in Australia: the by-election (for the Lower Houses of the Commonwealth and all states and territories bar the ACT and Tasmania); party selection (for the Senate and some state Upper Houses) and the Hare-Clark count-back (for Tasmania and the ACT).

Jacqui Burke was chosen by the Hare-Clark count-back. Briefly, all the ballot papers which went to elect the retiring member are selected out and recounted to seek out who was next the preferred available candidate of those voters. It is the next “”available” candidate because the preference might first have gone to an existing sitting member or it might have gone to a candidate who no longer wants to take a seat in the Assembly – having lost at the general election a candidate might have found a new fulfilling life.

But why not have a by-election? Surely, a lot of people who voted for Kate Carnell in 1998 might well have changed their mind by January 2000?
Continue reading “2001_01_january_by-election not on”

The merits of having a new capital hewn out of the unpopulated wilderness as against having the capital in an existing city were tossed about by delegates in the Adelaide and Melbourne constitutional conventions of 1897 and 1898 with wonderful Victorian language:

Joseph Abbott (NSW): I think that the position of New South Wales is exactly the same as the position of the state of New York, the capital of which is Albany. The capital of the state of New York contains 91,000 inhabitants-that is, the legal capital of the state of New York-but the city of New York, with Brooklyn, which forms part of the same city, contains 2,500,000 inhabitants. Wherever you fix the capital of Federated Australia, I feel sure that the facilities of trade will fix the capital where those facilities are the greatest, and I am not at all concerned as to where the capital will be fixed as a matter of law, because I know where it will be as a matter of fact. As there is no other city with the facilities of Sydney, the capital will, de facto, be Sydney, although it may, de jure, be in Western Australia. I think it is a small thing to quarrel about, or devote our attention to at present. Representing New South Wales, I am perfectly prepared to leave it to the Federal Parliament to determine where the capital of the Commonwealth shall be.
Continue reading “2001_01_january_break-out debate”

It is an election year in Australia. Three states, starting with Western Australia and Queensland next month, both territories and the Commonwealth all have elections.

In all of these elections, the vast majority of people will get most of their information about the candidates and their parties from the media. The exception is perhaps the Northern Territory. It has a single-member system in a tiny population. This results in electorates of only several thousand voters. A hard-working candidate in an urban seat could talk to almost every voter in an election year – it would only be ten a day.

Even in the tiny ACT, the media will play the crucial role in giving voters the raw material upon which to base their decisions.

It means politicians will have to rely on media outlets to get their message across. As that happens, the media will put each politicians’ message in context – in context of what the other side is doing, on what the politician’s own side is doing, on what that politician said in the past, on what that politician or his side of politics said in another geographic area. When that happens a simple message by one politician that this little pocket of Australia will get this goodie, will get (in the view of the politician) warped. One goodie given here is one less given there. A goodie for one group (land-clearing for farmers) is a horror for another (greenies).
Continue reading “2001_01_january_addendum27”

Under the ACT’s Hare-Clark system we do not have a new election every time a seat is vacated. Rather we have a count-back of the vote cast at the previous general election. The Electoral Commissioner looks at all the ballot papers that helped elect the vacating member. All the unsuccessful candidates at the previous general election can stand for the vacancy. The aim is to see who among the unsuccessful candidates is the next most favoured candidate of voters who had elected the vacating member.

In this instance, the commissioner will look only at the 25,379 ballot papers that were marked Carnell 1. The preferences indicated on those ballot papers are then followed through to the first available standing candidate. So a ballot marked Carnell 1, Humphries 2, Cornwell 3, Tolley 4, O’Keefe 4, Burke 5, Louttit 6, would be a vote for Burke because Humphries and Cornwell are already elected and O’Keefe and Tolley who were unsuccessful in 1998 are not standing for this vacancy. A ballot marked Carnell 1, Louttit 2, would be a vote for Louttit.

(The original 1998 votes of the contesting candidates, bear in mind, are not part of this process.)
Continue reading “2001_01_january_act count”

The Federal Government’s response to the McClure report on social welfare grasps the problem, but its solution is not smart enough. Since it was elected in 1996, the Government has grasped both popular sentiment and good sense in turning around welfare culture. Welfare, whether it be based upon unemployment, parenthood, age or disability is not an automatic right. The taxpaying community has a right to insist that those who get government benefits have to show not only instant need but a willingness to take steps to get themselves out of a situation of need and into self-support. Sure, if that is not possible, then the welfare benefits continue, but if there is no willingness to try to come out of welfare dependency, then benefits should, after appropriate warning, dry up. Few have an argument with that approach.

Secondly, the Government has rightly approached the question of welfare on the basis that throwing money at it is not the best approach and will not help either taxpayers or recipients in the long run.

Thirdly, the Government, or at least Treasurer Peter Costello, has recognised that the present welfare system often acts as a disincentive to move from welfare to work. This is because the different in family take home income can be as little as a dollar an hour after moving from welfare to work – and that is without taking into account the costs of going to work such as clothes. Transport and the lost opportunity of using the time for cost-saving by working at home to produce clothing, food, child-care and maintenance of shelter. In short, some families are worse off when they go to work. The tax system, the deductions from welfare payments and the costs of working militate against people moving from work to welfare.
Continue reading “2000_12_december_welfare”