Crispin Hull

A direct election for the head of state is a rusted on opinion. It is not going to be changed, so people wanting a republic may as well start drafting their new models from that base position.

The rusted-on nature of the direct election is evident from research to be published next week in the Australian Social Monitor by Professor Jonathan Kelley of the ANU, Bruce Headley and M. D. R. Evans of Melbourne University and Malcolm Mearns, principal of the Canberra research firm Datacol.

The reserachers have cruched a lot of numbers and have come up with some surprising and significant results about Australains’ opinion on the monarchy and republic. Giventhe Opposition Leader Kim Beazley says the republic will beackon the agenda if Labor wins the election, Professor Kelley’s results are well worth looking at.

Their research (which can be viewed from mid-week at www.social-monitor.com) starts with some historic crunch poitns in the debate. The first was in 1980 when the number of people who thought the Queen and the Royal Family were fairly or very important to Australia fell below 50 per cent. That fell below a third in 1994 and has remain below a third ever since.

The second crunch point came between 1990 and 1994 when a majority thought Australia should be a republic with its own head of state rather than having the Queen. It has remained over 60 per cent ever since. The last crunch point is the subject of the most recent detailed research. That reveals the rusted-on nature of support for a direct election, most critically that support comes from across age and sociao-economic groups.
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So, the ACT has one of the highest rate of car theft in the land and the most costly delivery of health care.

This, and a myriad of other measurements came out this week courtesy of the fifth Productivity Commission report on government services.

This year the report showed that the ACT has among the shortest wait for public housing, the least spent on traffic enforcement, the best ambulance response times, the longest wait for aged care places, the most expensive child care and so on.

The report goes into searching detail to answer questions on how much, how many and how quickly. But it does not answer the question why the differences occur or what should be done about them. The report is quite open about that. Those are matters for the state and territory governments to deal with.

The car-theft statistic is a case in point. When we have such comparitively low levels of crime in general, why is car theft high? And what should be done about it? Mandatory life sentences for car theft, surely.

Thinking a little more deeply, what is peculiar about Canberra that might make car theft more prevalent. Well, Canberra has a rule against fron fences. It makes cars in driveways more exposed. It might be the price we pay for our beautiful suburbs.
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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.

Hitherto it has taken freak circumstances for preferences to affect the overall outcome. It happened in 1961 when DLP preferences gave the Coalition a victory that would otherwise have been Labor’s. And in 1990 preferences gave a Coalition candidate’s lead on the first-preference count to Labor, changing the election outcome.
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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.

It would be nice to think that Meninga and his advisers are falling into the trap of fighting the next election on the basis of previous ones when any One Nation or independent could get votes by merely kicking the majors but that the electorate had re-educated itself and would not fall for such simplistic drivel. It would be nice to think the ACT electorate would not accept statements like: “”I am not from the major parties. I am just an ordinary person and I want to make commonsense decisions for ordinary people.” It would be nice to think that voters would demand some detail.
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Alas not many children will see the program on McDonald’s on Cutting Edge on Tuesday.

It is on SBS. It is serious. It does not come in the colourful short bites that children love, irrespective of content.

But it is before their bedtime, starting at 8.30pm.

The program is on what has become known as the McLibel case, the longest trial in English history. McDonald’s sued David Morris and Helen Steel after they persisted with a pamphlet campaign outside McDonald’s in London. McDonald’s $5000-a-day barrister estimated the case would take about 2 and a half weeks. It took two and a half years. Morris and Steel represented themselves but as more became known about the case, many witnesses and people with legal skills volunteered to help.

Under English (and Australian) law all the onus is on the publisher to prove the truth of everything published.

As on commentator said on the program, there is no freedom of speech, only an appearance of freedom of speech.

This is a David (and Helen) vs Goliath story.
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Mandatory minimum sentences present judges with a horrible dilemma. They are sworn to uphold the law and to do justice. But with mandatory minimum sentences judges cannot do both.

In the Northern Territory, the judges have attacked against mandatory sentencing, and in doing so have revealed their anguish. Not all Northern Territorians are red necks. Indeed, the fact that these laws are in force there has brought out the territory’s civil liberties proponents.

Justice Dean Mildren of the Northern Territory Supreme Court has spoken eloquently against mandatory sentences since they began in March 1997.

In a case last year he said, “”Prescribed minimum mandatory sentencing provisions are the very antithesis of just sentences. If a court thinks that a proper just sentence is the prescribed minimum or more, the minimum prescribed penalty is unnecessary. It therefore follows that the sole purpose of a prescribed minimum mandatory sentencing regime is to require sentencers to impose heavier sentences than would be proper according to the justice of the case.”
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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.
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The Indonesian Ambassador, Arizal Effendi, is concerned that the Australian media is threatening Australia-Indonesia relations. He said, “”If the Press, an influential component in public opinion-making continues to engage in mutual incrimination and stereotyped reporting, the inherent complexities in our relations will deepen rather than ameliorate”. He said that Indonesia would resist lecturing and the trend by some nations (like Australia) to use humaitarian considerations as a justification for intervention in other countries.

This approach suffers from several difficulties. First, it assumes that the media in Australia is a single institution with a single voice. In fact, there are numerous media outlets in Australia with many varying voices, some diametrically opposed on many subjects, including Indonesia. Far from there being a sterotypical view, there are many views. Secondly, the approach assumes that the media represents an official Australian view, whether a government view or a synthesis of public opinion. Not so.

If there is anything stereotypical here it is Mr Effendi assuming that the Australia media is like the Indonesian media – controlled. Mr Effendi said that unless the Australian media toned it down, the two nations could live without each other.

That should be put in the context of the recent statement by Indonesian Foreign Minister Shihab last year that Indonesia would strengthen ties with other countries in the region such as China.
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Prime Minister John Howard is in a difficult position over National Textiles. His brother, Stan, is chairman of the board of directors of the company. Mr Howard explained this week that his brother had briefed him about the company’s difficulties more than a year ago. Stan Howard said that the company might apply for government assistance. The Prime Minister had then contacted the responsible minister and, quite properly, declared his interest and said the matter should be treated on its merits. No assistance was given. So there is no issue on that score.

However, the company has since gone into administration and the Prime Minister was told about that by his brother very shortly beforehand. When the company went into administration it owed its employees several million dollars in leave and other entitlements. That immediately became a political issue. There has been concern over the past several years about the fate of workers’ entitlements when businesses fail. The arguments have split on party lines with Labor supporting the workers and the Coalition on the side of employers. True, Labor in government did nothing to change the law to give workers better protection, but there were no spectacular crashes in its term of office, such as the collapse of the Woodlawn mining company which left 160 workers owed $6.5 million in 1998 and put the Government on notice that something ought to be done.
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It is early days, but it now seems that the White House cannot be bought, or at least not bought as easily as was thought a year ago. George W. Bush, the Governor of Texas and son of former President George Bush who has raised a huge war chest of money to fight his campaign for the White House, has not done well in the first two primaries for the Republican Party nomination. Significantly, he is being challenged by a campaigner for election-funding reform, Senator John McCain.

Senator McCain beat Bush by 19 points in New Hampshire last week. This week Mr Bush beat him fairly easily in Delaware, but Mr McCain did not campaign there. On the other hand, Mr Bush visited the small state five times and was backed by the entire party establishment which organises the primaries. The establishment favoured Mr Bush by having only a few polling booths, shutting out rank and file Republicans.

New Hampshire is notorious for backing challengers to the favourite, but McCain’s victory there has nonetheless shaken up the Republican Party. Many Republicans did not want a repeat of 1996 when early squabbling among potential Republican nominees hurt the overall campaign against Democrat President Bill Clinton. Perhaps, they thought, an early cohesive backing of Mr Bush would prevent that. Many Republican members of Congress and Governors have given formal backing to Bush. And many corporate backers have funded his campaign. They backed him because he had the money and the pedigree, and because he looked like the leading contender. They wanted to back a winner. But slowly they must be feeling they have backed the wrong man. As the campaign progresses, Mr Bush looks more uncomfortable with foreign policy. He also descends into platitudes, slogans and almost gibberish at times. He is fearful of saying anything direct for fear of upsetting voters. As a result he has upset no-one, but he has also inspired no-one.
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