Crispin Hull

Australia still has a good health system on world standards, but we are squandering it fast.

Last week three or four things added to the evidence that we are heading that way.

A judgment brought down by the Federal Court in Western Australia slammed the Australian Medical Association for engaging in anti-competitive conduct. A paper by Julie Smith issued by the Australia Institute put the damning dots and crosses on the I’s and T’s on what we have known to be the inequity of the Government’s health-insurance rebate scheme. An institute paper by Fran White and Kevin Collyer put the cement work on what has worried many about the corporatisation of health care. And long-running disputes by nurses in NSW and ACT have continued without governments recognising the fundamental folly of continuing to exploit (mainly) women in a profession so necessary to society’s well-being.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_health forum”

A big gripe about the ACT Hare-Clark system is that you do not get a clear result on the night. Indeed, in the part two elections it has taken more than a week to get the result of the last seat confirmed.

This Saturday, it is very likely we will know all 17 MLAs mid-evening on Saturday. This is because of electronic voting. Electronic voting will be available at Melba, Richardson, Gungahlin and Weston, and the four pre-poll voting centres. At the very least 10,000 voters will vote this way. More likely 20,000 and may be double that.

The electronic vote can be counted right down to the last preference in a matter of minutes. Manual voting takes much longer.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_hare-clark count”

When the Electoral Commission’s computer crunched the preferences of the 11,909 Brindabella votes it had in its system yesterday, it ended Gary Humphries (very slender) chance of government, and cut severely the influence that the Democrats would have in the next Assembly.

It is a sample of 21 per cent of the electorate and is not likely to change.

It gave Labor the third seat in Brindabella and its eighth seat in the Assembly. Together with the Greens Kerrie Tucker (who has vowed not to vote for a Liberal Chief Minister) it is a majority for Jon Stanhope’s Labor Party without needing to deal with the Democrats.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_greens-labor”

Next Saturday, voters will be armed with Act Electoral Commission advice that they must mark preferences for at least the number of seats (five or seven) that there are in their electorate. After that you can mark as many or as few as you want.

This week’s Canberra-Times-Datacol polling indicates that it is critical for voters to number right through to the end. It is quite likely that the last two seats will be determined by preferences expressed well down from the first five or seven and that many votes of those who restrict themselves to the minimum number of preferences will exhaust and they will lose the right to have a say in which minor party or independent will get the last seat.

An ACT Hare-Clark election is a very different beast from a Federal House of Representatives election. In the House of Representatives election the way the preferences or the minor parties are distributed to the major parties is critical. And preferences from the major parties to the minor parties do not matter a toss because the two major party candidates are in almost all cases the last two standing in the count and so their preferences never get distributed.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_forum voting patters”

Dave Rugendyke did the decent thing, up to a point. Last Friday week he warned Chief Minister Kate Carnell that he would vote against her in any no-confidence on Bruce Stadium.

He could have done what he did in the no-confidence motion 15 months ago. He could have kept his view to himself until it came time to vote. Instead, he was upfront immediately. But he also gave Carnell and the Liberals more than a week’s warning.

And as the cliché goes, a week is a long time in politics.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_fixed terms and poll”

Counting was much slower than hoped last night.

The electronic vote was not as early as hoped, nor was there enough of it to make solid predictions.

Only the pre-poll electronic vote was posted early. The electronic vote on the day was posted much later.

And just before 10pm the Electoral Commission’s website crashed, but an intranet site was still available at the tally room.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_electronic vote”

This week to matters electoral. Peter Andren the lone Independent in the House of Representatives put forward some ideas for change federally. The ACT’s Electoral Commissioner, Phillip Green, canvassed the prospects of internet voting. And speculation is rife about the position in the ACT. Political scientist Malcolm Mackerras points out that an election would clear the air by the system does not permit it, and what would happen if Kate Carnell left the Assembly.

First to Andren. Andren is one of only a handful of people since World War II to be elected as an independent to the House of Representatives – as distinct from major-party candidates deserting.

In a speech in Canberra this week he called for a system of proportional representation in the House of Representatives. The quick response would be: “”Tell ‘im he’s dreamin’.” True, the major parties are never going to agree to it, but they may be forced to in the longer term. Andren points to a steady disillusionment with major-party politics. Last election 20 per cent of voters gave their vote to independents and minor parties (treating the Coalition as one). Andren was the only one elected. He is just 1.5 per cent of the total membership of the House of Representatives. Something wrong here. One Nation got 8.4 per cent of the vote and no seats. In 1990 the Democrats got 11.3 per cent of the vote and no seats.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_electoral”

The ACT Electoral Act (Section 100) requires that the election be held on the third Saturday in October, 2001. If you have the numbers it would be a simple matter to change the section.

But that would fly in the face of ACT constitutional history. The fixed term was part of a package of Federal legislation that set out the system of government. There would be no Governor or Administrator. Rather it would be a self-executing system. The people would elect the MLAs and the MLAs would elect the Chief Minister who would then choose the ministers. There would be no Administrator to “”call upon” someone to form a Government or to accept advice to “”call” an election.

The Electoral Act was patriated to the ACT in 1992 so the Legislative Assembly had power over electoral matters. The idea was that the ACT could set up its own electoral commission and the like, not so that it could fiddle with fundamentals.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_early poll”

The poll showed also that Jon Stanhope was preferred as Chief Minister over both Kate Carnell and Gary Humphries.

The poll was taken as the Liberal Party, Osborne independents and Michael Moore were looking at the option of having an early election to resolve the matter. The ACT usually has a fixed term with the next election due on the third Saturday in October next year. It would require a change in the Electoral Act to have an early election. That would require nine MLAs to agree.

Should an election be called it is likely to be held on either Saturday December 2nd or 9th.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_datacolumnl poll”

The Canberra Times Datacol polls taken over the past two weeks picked the major shift in this election.

Three weeks ago most people would have thought that Independents Dave Rugendyke and Paul Osborne were a shoe in and that the Democrats would shoot themselves in the foot again.

Datacol said that the Democrats were polling solidly and that the two conservative independents were in trouble.

Datacol also picked the shift of vote from the Liberal Party to Labor and that the Liberals were doing better in Molonglo than the other electorates.

In every election since self-government Datacol has predicted the major shifts, often against popular belief. In 1989 and 1992 that the majors were polling disastrously, in 1995 that the Liberals could win in this largely Labor town and again in 1998 and this time that the cross-bench had moved to the left.