Crispin Hull

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.

Then there was this exchange:

Joseph Carruthers (NSW): We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that very good argument may be used against having the federal capital dissociated from those centres of trade and commerce and culture which exist in Australia. I, for one, look at the example which the United States has afforded us as one not worthy of being copied – to establish the capital almost in the wilderness, away from where commercial men, professional men, men of education, are wont to congregate, away from where their business keeps them together, and to set the affairs of the State, forsooth, to be conducted in some far distant place, where there are not those surroundings of civilization which tend to make life pleasant or to make society happy. I think that one of the results of establishing the capital of the United States at Washington, has been largely to divorce from political life some of the best elements of the community. We do not want to copy a mistake of that character. Let us contemplate for one moment the establishment of a federal capital, as has been proposed in some places, in the interior of Australia. There are many who advocate its establishment there on the ground that it will be easily defended.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_break-out debate”

This week Labor MP Andrew Theophanous called for all refugees who have been in detention more than 18 months to be freed.

The call highlights several developments in Australia’s immigration policy. For a start, the historic positions of the major parties have now been reversed. Early this century Labor was anti-immigration because it feared a migrant influx would create cheap labour and its voters — the white working class — would have to cop lower wages.

Then after World War II both parties were pro-immigration. Soon the migrant population formed a large part of the lower wage earners and became Labor voters. Labor took an interest in their concerns — one of which was family reunion and more migrants from their home countries. Add to this is the post-Whitlam educated Labor view — racial equality, diversity, civil rights etc. — and Labor becomes the migration party. The Hawke and Keating Governments had far higher migrant intakes than the Howard Government.

The conservatives, meanwhile, are no longer proponents of importing cheap labour to feed the capitalists’ factories, for the simple reason that the factories are not longer here. Indeed, the capitalists have moved the factories to the labour rather than the labour to the factories. And it is the Howard Government — not a Labor Government — that capitalises on the working-class battlers’ cry of jobs being taken by cheap migrant labour.

So this leaves us with a Government tough on immigration and a tough immigration Minister, in Philip Ruddock.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_boat people”

In 1976 a persuasive latter-day Nostradamus convinced many people that Adelaide would be hit by a major earthquake. He cited the precise date. Panic set in. Many people backed their belongings and streamed out of Adelaide.

That afternoon, the Adelaide News, the now defunct afternoon paper, ran with a banner headline and poster for the newsagencies which screamed: IT DIDN’T HAPPEN!

Well, obviously, the newspaper came out.

It didn’t happen on December 31, 1999, either. But this time one newspaper reported it did. That evening 26,000 copies of The Canberra Times were printed. At the bottom of Page 1 was a small item stating: “”Preparation of The Canberra Times was affected early this morning by Y2K problems. As a result, we are unable to bring you today a special wrap-around showing Canberra moving into the New Year and our special First Word magazine. These will be distributed in The Canberra Times tomorrow.”

As we now know, the full paper came out on January 1 with splendid wrap around and the magazine. And the 26,000 “”it happened” copies were taken to the recycling bin, minus a few souvenired by staff.

Since then the letters column has bubbled over with outrage at the waste of $12 billion in Australia in fixing Y2K problems. The money would have been better spent on hospitals, schools and roads, the argument ran.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_addendum8”

Before Privacy laws spoiled all the fun, a great ritual was played out on a walls of the Chifley library at the ANU in the first week of December.

Half a dozen minions of the university administration would walk across the library lawn carried large boards with lists of everyone’s exam results.

Names, subjects, successes and failures were there for all the world to see. Students milled around and surged to the boards. Squeals, moans (made more poignant if failure meant no more study deferral for national service) muttered commiserations and hearty congratulations flowed. We then adjourned to the Union Bar with occasional returns to the results board when an absent friend was remembered.

And there were many absent friends who returned to homes out of Canberra to bludge on parents or for holiday jobs.

The absent friends, though, were catered for by The Canberra Times which in those days published the whole list, all keyed in by linotype operators with lead output checked against original paper.

Incidentally, that is the true meaning of proof-reading — where one person reads what has been re-keyed against an original version. It is not to be confused with editing (called sub-editing in newspaper not to confuse the role with the editor’s more general task). With editing there is only one original version which the editor changes, correcting grammar, spelling, sense etc.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_addendum29”

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).

In short, as each politician tries to be all things to all people, the media will point out the inconsistencies and contradictions.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_addendum27”

Steve Ellis, of Hackett, has written in with a list of requests for 2000 including one asking: “”Can the letters to the editor page be declared an R. S. Gilbert-free zone for a little while?

“”You presumably receive many more letters than you can publish, so why not give someone else a go?”

They are fair enough questions. I would love to give someone else a go. But by and large the rejected letters are self-rejecting. They get rejected on the usual grounds: too long; illegible; illogical; illiterate; irrelevant; obscene; a similar letter has already run; or no address.

Letters from regulars — like R. S. Gilbert, John Cleland, Bob Steege, Mike O’Shaughnessy — are the only ones rejected on the grounds of objection against the person who wrote them. Some letters written by R. S. Gilbert are indeed rejected purely on the ground that they are written by R. S. Gilbert, because he has others approved still in the system. Otherwise they would be eminently publishable.

Letter selection is usually done by me, Editor Jack Waterford or Associated Editor Penelope Layland. We tend to read the content and mentally accept or reject before we see who has written the letter. Most people sign at the bottom of the letter.

By and large we will always publish a well-written, pertinent (or better still, impertinent) letter under 250 words. But there are ebbs and flows of letters. The number will drop over school holidays and public holidays. The number will rise if there is a hot issue running.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_addendum15”

Emma Macdonald was quite cross last week.

She had written a column for the Summer Page. The Summer Page runs in January to add bulk to the paper and fill the space between the saying advertisements. It is also there to occupy people who take January off down the coast. There is some light entertainment and the soft read.

Macdonald’s column was a beautifully written tale about a possum that lived in her fire box. She got e-mails and letters saying what a wonderful piece and litanies from people telling her how possums should be removed, fed, cared for or exterminated.

So a fuming Emma came into the office, “” I write all this important stuff about the education of people’s kids, for Christ’ sake, and no-one says a word. I write a shitty little piece about a bloody possum and all these people write in saying . . . .””

(Sorry, journalists tend to speak with the expletives undeleted and undiluted.)

She was too cross to finish the sentence.

I tried to console her by relating a story about Bruce Juddery. One day Juddery wrote an hilarious column about driving back from the South Coast in a very unreliable Volkswagen.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_addendum jan20”

By-election for the seat in Molonglo vacated by Kate Carnell got under way yesterday. People enrolled in Molonglo will not vote, simply because they have already voted – in February 1998.

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.)

If a candidate gets over 50 per cent of the available vote, he or she is elected. Otherwise the candidates with the least vote is excluded and preferences distributed, House of Representatives style.
Continue reading “2000_01_january_act count”

They looked a forlorn group on the jetty at Rottnest Island. It was a mixed group of 17 and 18-year-olds with Eskies and bags haphazardly strewn about in the burning sun. I overheard a conversation with a youthful passer-by.

“”G’day. Thought youse were going back Thursdee.”

“”Nah. We’ve been evicted off the island.”

“”Yeah. Geddout. Whadda they do that for?”

“”Dunno.”
Continue reading “1999_12_december_wa travel”

One of the joys of living in Canberra in that we are so close to the south coast a its extraordinary diving and snorkelling sites. Many divers are obsessed with the tropics: the Great Barrier Reef and the South Pacific, but just here we have rocky reefs in temperate waters that support an abundance of life of great diversity and complexity. A fair amount of material has been published on the fish life (mainly for the huge recreational fishing industry), much less on the invertebrates, alga and plants and still less on how they integrate.
Continue reading “1999_12_december_southern seas”