Crispin Hull

The ACT Liberal Party is toying with the idea of conducting a referendum at the election on October 20th. The referendum would ask whether there should be trials for a safe injecting room, for the provision of heroin under medical supervision for addicts and a trial for the use of the drug Naltrexone in a detoxification program.

At first blush, many voters would welcome more consultation from governments in of the form of a referendums. Calls for referendums are quite frequent among the contributors to Letters to the Editor columns, for example. Referendums are used to very frequently in the United States and Europe to resolve policy questions. In Australia, of course, we use them as the only method to change our federal Constitution. There is, however, a big difference between a referendum on a complex question of medical or criminal law and a question about the system of government. Questions about the latter are very suitable as referendum questions. It is important for the legitimacy of government that the people are sovereign and that the people have consented to the way in which there are ruled. Referendums also perhaps have a place in citizens’ veto once laws are passed.

The trouble with submitting specific policy matters to referendum is that people by and large do not see it their job to get to themselves thoroughly knowledgeable about every issue of government. That is the purpose for which they elect others. Moreover, governments have access to a bureaucracy and any number of specialist advisers, so should be in a better position to make a decision.
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The Australian a Council of Trade Unions has put forward a number of policy priorities which it would like to see implemented if Labor wins the next election.

They are a mixed bag. The six demands were for a GST roll-back; tax cuts for low income families; a system of tax credits; a test case for more reasonable working hours; a decent annual wage rise for the low paid; and abolition of workplace laws that have weakened unions. Some of those demands coincide with existing Labor policy. On other points, the ACTU would like to break new ground.

It is the aim of both major parties, unions and employers to lift the living standards of Australian workers, including those who at present are among the lowest paid in the community. The only difference is how does one go about achieving that. There is little point granting pay rises to employees if employers businesses do not get productivity gains to sustain those rises. All that results in is higher inflation and everyone being worse off. On this score, the idea of passing new laws that will give the unions a more privileged position is flawed. So, too, is the idea that the mere say-so of an arbitration commission can generate additional community wealth sufficient to pay some arbitrated pay rise. Any attempt by industrial-relations tribunals to increase wages must be paid for by its someone somewhere – – usually in the form of fewer jobs as employers desert for more competitive environments or force their existing workforce to fill the gap, often in the form of a longer working hours – – ironically one of the other concerns of the ACTU.
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Independent member of the Legislative Assembly Michael Moore has made a significant contribution to government in the ACT over the past 12 and a half years. Mr Moore announced yesterday that he would not contest the upcoming election for the assembly in October.

Mr Moore has been in at the Assembly since the beginning of self-government in 1989, winning four elections – always the last candidate to be elected in the ACT when it was a single electorate or last when he stood in Molonglo after the introduction of the three-electorate Hare-Clark system in 1995. Even though last elected, his influence has been profound.

There is a paradox about Mr Moore’s career. He has often been accused of being a single issue candidate, either directly or as part of a general criticism of independents and cross benches. Yet looking back over his 12 and half years it is difficult to see a single issue that he pursued that got on to the statute book intact. His greatest contribution has not been in a single issue politics. Rather, it has been in challenging the standard two-party model of Australian politics and in doing so helping develop the unique method of governance that we have in the ACT.
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The Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, is on the right track with Knowledge Nation. The Labor Party received a report this week from a committee it had appointed to examine ways in which Australia could become what is now called a “”Knowledge Nation”. The committee brought to forward a number of uncosted recommendations that ranged from higher retention rates, so that 90 per cent of teenagers have Year 12 or higher, to the doubling of research and development financing by 2010. Other recommendations included the creation of 1000 commercial and university research positions to encourage Australian scientists and researchers to return home, significant increases in public funding of universities, the boosting of online education and the making of access to digital broadband a national priority.

An immediate attack has been made up on the program because it is uncosted and represents just a wish-list, in the words of Prime Minister John Howard.

Some of the reaction indicates the difficulty of the Opposition’s task. On one hand, many people are crying out for leadership and vision and a movement away from the bean-counting mentality. On the other hand, many people are shouting where is the money coming from.
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The Government’s decision to waive debts of up to $1,000 for about 400,000 families who have been overpaid family tax benefits is the wrong deed for the wrong reason.

The matter arose as a result of the introduction of the new tax system. Eleven separate benefits were very sensibly brought down to three, and a new method of calculating them was applied. The old system was unfair because if people understated their income, they would not be able to retrieve the entitlements they would have got if they had stated it correctly in the first place. The Coalition introduced a system whereby people could tell Centrelink of their income as it varied and their family benefits would be varied accordingly. However, many people did not tell Centrelink when their income rose. As a result, when their final income was totalled at the end of the financial year it would it transpire that they had been paid too much family allowance. In the ordinary course of events, they would be required to repay the overpayment. However, it is not “the ordinary course of events”. It is instead, the lead-up to a federal election. Moreover, it is the first anniversary of the introduction of the new tax system so the Government is sensitive to criticism.
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Today Australia begins a new tax regime. No tax change has been subjected to so much publicity, information and misinformation. Much of that has centered around whether a partifular family configuration will be better or worse off under the new regime or whether a particular item will cost more of less under the new regime. They have been arid arguments of little moment centered around whether the Opposition or the Democrats might capture a few votes among a given class of people: motorists, caravan dwellers, tampon purchasers – and yes, the “”debate” went there, too – artists supplies or whatever.

Fundamentally, though, John Howard and his government have been right to tackle tax reform and implement fundamental changes. It was in the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby of “”Yes, Minister”” fame, a “”courageous decsion”. That was a euphemism for doing the right thing but at a cost of many votes. It was a euphemism for doing something that the well-informed knew was sensible and worthwhile but which was open to attack by opponents byu preying on the fear of change by the ignorant and ill-informed. It is so easy for an Opposition to be opportunistic when a Government engages in significant change. Oppositions know that those in favour of change will at best be lukewarm about it, while those against will be veciferous.
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Chief Minister Kate Carnell is within her rights not to resign following the defeat of her Government’s Budget yesterday. In the ACT the proper procedure for the removal of a Chief Minister is a formal vote of no-confidence in her with seven days’ notice. Members of the Legislative Assembly then focus on that issue. It may that such a motion arises out of the events surrounding the defeat of a Budget, but it need not necessarily flow.

Mrs Carnell still has some time up her sleeve. Under the Treasurer’s advance from last year’s Budget she can still legally keep the machinery of government going while she works a way through the impasse. The impasse was created after two MLAs who usually form part of her majority – Independents Dave Rugendyke and Paul Osborne – voted against her Budget because it contained a line item of $80,000 for a safe injecting place for heroin users. Their vote was illogical, unprincipled and has unnecessarily inflicted instability on the ACT. They should have followed the more principled and responsible approach of former Liberal and now United Canberra MLA, Trevor Kaine. Mr Kaine, like Mr Rugendyke and Mr Osborne, is an opponent of the safe injecting place. He put his views forcefully when the legislation to set it up was debated. The legislation was approved by a majority of the Assembly. He then accepted defeat gracefully and acknowledged the majority had the right to have the law put into effect. He did not seek to enforce a minority position on a single issue by threatening to vote a whole Budget down.
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The retirement of independent ACT Michael Moore and the movement to the crossbench of National Party MP Bob Katter highlight of the huge difference in potential between independents in the two jurisdictions.

Federally, an independent verges on the powerless. In the ACT, on the other hand an independent has the potential to be an enormous force against abuses of power by an the major parties.

Katter’s move to the backbench will change nothing. He could hardly be less forthright in his criticism of the direction of the Government. It is possible he will be even less influential as an independent because the media will no longer seek him out as a controversial person who kicks his own side.

In federal politics the lower house which determines the Government is elected on a single-member constituency basis. It verges on the impossible for a person to stand and win as an independent. In the past two decades, only Ted Mack, Peter Andren and Phil Cleary have stood for the House from nomination time as independents and been elected. Others have moved from major parties, like Katter. But with 147 or 148 members, the government of the day has usually had a majority that would subsume the three or four independents in the House.
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Former Chief Justice Gerard Brennan made some pertinent comments about our Constitution to this week.

He said, “The advice “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” might apply to plumbing, but not to the Constitution of a nation in a rapidly changing environment.”

He then outlined several elements of the Constitution which are definitely broke. These are not matters of everyday significance but they profoundly affect the administration of justice in Australia.

The framers of our Constitution did a first-rate job given the political and social and economic environment and of the time. But even they recognised that their creation would require occasional fixing up. That is why they provided for a mechanism to amend the Constitution that they created. Amendments require the assent of a majority of people in a majority of states. It was deliberately made difficult to get an amendment, but it has been made even more difficult by the fact that amendments can only be proposed by the federal parliament, which means in effect they have to be initiated by the federal government. And the federal government is made up of politicians who are more interested in the next election that the long-term framework of the Australian polity.
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Blackadder was justified be kinder to Shakespeare when he visited him a second in his time machine on Monday night. Earlier, he had castigated Shakespeare for being the scourge of every schoolboy. On the second visit he praised his prescience. A scene involving a time machine that was especially apt for Shakespeare, the playwright who transcends time.

On Friday morning on the ABC’s AM program, Treasurer Peter Costello, more than 400 years after the play had been written, was behaving just like Hamlet. It has been Costello’s outrageous fortune to have John Howard as his stubborn, resilient, accidental leader, preventing him from succeeding to a leadership which he thinks should be naturally his.Costello was being questioned about assertions in a new biography by Age journalist Shaun Carney that Costello thought that Howard was uncomfortable at some level with the prevalence of Asian faces in Australia, that Howard seemed lost in the prime ministership and by mid-1999 had unofficially retired.
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