Crispin Hull

On its face, Labor was routed at the weekend and the Coalition victorious on a huge scale. But appearances can be deceptive.

Aside from the ministerial blood all over the floor, the outward appearance is as follows: Labor won 81 seats in 1993. On Saturday it won just 48. The Coalition went from 65 in 1993 to 95.

So Labor, a nominally leftist party, lost 40 per cent of its seats. On its face, a debacle. The Coalition, of two conservative parties, did 50 per cent better than in 1993.

But what is the real result as an expression of the will of the Australian people.

In 1993, Labor got 44.9 per cent of the primary vote and the Coalition got 44.3 The rest went to minor parties. After distribution of preferences the result was 51.4 per cent Labor to 48.6 per cent to the Coalition. In 1996, after preferences, Labor got 46 and the Coalition got 54. That is not an enormous swing of opinion.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_pollsum”

About 11.5 million Australians will go to the polls tomorrow to elect 148 members of the House of Representatives and 40 members of the Senate.

At present Labor has 79 seats in the House of Representatives and needs to retain 75 of them to keep government. A uniform swing of just half a per cent would give the Coalition Government. Opinion polls have been giving the Coalition a lead of between four and eight per cent throughout the campaign which began with the election announcement five weeks ago.

Today, The Canberra Times brings you a comprehensive guide to the election. Today’s guide includes a comparison of policies, a summary of marginal and interesting seats to watch a guide to the count in the Senate and a guide to coverage by the electronic media tomorrow night.

On Sunday, The Canberra Times will carry the last count of all House of Representative seats and the Senate, expert analysis, details of where doubtful seats are likely to go, reports of victory and defeat speeches and detail of how the ACT voted.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_polfront”

The leasehold-freehold debate was fired along during the week.

Jim Service … banker, property developer, businessman and long-time Canberra resident … condemned the Stein report as an extremist philosophy because it supported the retention of leasehold.

He argued that leasehold was preventing investment in the city because it made investment unwelcome.

It is a bizarre argument. If it were true, there would be no Canberra. The whole lot has been built on leasehold. And in so far as investors and economists like “”growth” Canberra has had the greatest total growth of any city in Australia since federation. Clearly leasehold does not prevent growth and investment.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_lesae”

There is something out of the ordinary with Justice Burchett’s handling of the ARL-Super League dispute.

It seems he has taken on the role of determining the fate of rugby league in Australia rather than ruling on a series of contracts and trade practices claims. It seems he is determined to crush super league and give the ARL a clear run, as if he were Minister for Sport, rather than a judge in a commercial dispute.

In the original court case, the judge found that News Limited and Superleague using dishonest tactics had enticed clubs to breach their contracts with the ARL. They had done that by signing up individual players direct with Superleague. He found that individual clubs had breached contracts with the ARL. The players do not have contracts directly with the ARL. Those findings are quite supportable on the evidence.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_league13”

The Democrats and the Greens have made various noises about what they might do to the Coalition’s industrial relations reforms. The devil, of course, will be in the detail. No doubt the Coalition will have to engage in some compromise in some details. However, there is one Coalition proposal that the Democrats and Greens should accept. That is the Coalition’s plan to scrap the absurd notion of “”protected industrial action”.

Under protected action, the “”umpire” … the Industrial Relations Commission … does not have to require unionists to lift bans and other industrial action before they negotiate with an employer. It means that employees can still get paid while holding a gun to the employer’s head. We have seen dramatic examples in the ACT in recent weeks, notably employees sabotaging their employer’s ability to receive money. The rule should be if you do not work without bans you should not get paid.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leadermaa27”

The ACT Government is to be commended for its response to the Stein report. The response should put to rest any idea that land tenure in the ACT will move from 99-year leasehold to freehold or perpetual leasehold. It should also put an end to hidden subsidies to developers when leases are changed to allow more profitable uses, for example, from single residential to units or commercial offices or from sport and community use to housing. In future, the general pattern will be that owners of leases who seek to change the purpose will pay the full difference in value. However, the Government may grant remissions to encourage development, but where it does so, it put it before the Assembly for potential disallowance and must notify the amount of the remission in the Gazette.

Further, the calculation of the change of use fee … to be called a development-rights charge, not betterment … is to be clarified and based on Australian Valuation Office values. A reasonable deduction is to be allowed for demolition of existing buildings if that is necessary.

The Government has ensured security of tenure by providing for automatic renewals of leases on payment of an administrative fee and for 50-year commercial leases to be extended to 99-year leases.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader29mar”

Residents of Ainslie joined the concern of other residents associations in the inner north about traffic in their suburb this week. They say it is getting as bad as on the western side of Northbourne Avenue. The traffic flow, particularly at peak hours, in residential streets on both sides of Northbourne Avenue has increased substantially in the past five years and is likely to continue climbing. The reason has been obvious. New suburbs have been built, notably Gungahlin, North Lyneham and West Belconnen without laying out reasonable road infrastructure to bear the traffic they would generate. The land has been sold for the newer suburbs, with profits going to the developers, without provision for the necessary public infrastructure outside those suburbs. (And incidentally, the town centre and other non-traffic infrastructure in Gungahlin have been similarly ignored.)

The result is a bunfight of competing interests. Residents of Gungahlin, quite reasonably, want to get to work in Civic, Woden and beyond. Residents of inner north, quite reasonably, do not want large volumes of through-traffic charging through their suburbs on roads that were never designed to take it. Residents of the fringe of Mount Ainslie and the green belt between inner north and Belconnen do not want freeways carved through the bushland to take the Gungahlin traffic. ACT rate-payers do not want to subsidise a light-rail system or some other economically irresponsible dream solution. People who respect the notion of Canberra as the national city do not want Northbourne Avenue … the present gateway to Canberra … to lose chunks of its median strip to turning lanes, bus lanes, train lanes, or extra lanes.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader27mar”

The mythology has been that Australians do not like dobbers. Apparently our convict history makes us suspicious of dobbers. The consequence has been that without dobbers, wrong-doers have been able to act with impunity. In particular, corruption has spread among the very people with the duty to act against wrong-doers, and confidence in the law-enforcement system has been sapped. A survey by the Independent Commission Against Corruption published this week paints a depressing picture about it. Of 515 people surveyed, 71 per cent thought whistle-blowers would suffer for reporting corruption. Given the history of treatment of whistle-blowers in Australia, their perception has foundation.

The ICAC report said people did not know who to trust when reporting wrong-doing. Given the history of corruption in the NSW police force, their misgivings have foundation. The head of ICAC, Barry O’Keefe, quite rightly said, “”We have got to create a climate in which reporting wrong-doing is acceptable.”

Fortunately, there is reason to think that this depressing state of affairs can be changed … but little thanks to ICAC. The reason is the superb job being done by the Wood Royal Commission. Justice James Wood has exposed widespread police corruption where previous inquirers, including ICAC (before Mr O’Keefe’s time), failed dismally. The Wood Royal Commission very competently gathered the evidence, forcing public confessions which in turn caused other perpetrators to the inevitable conclusion that it would be better to confess to gain a lighter sentence or immunity than trying to maintain innocence against the facts.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader27amar”

The move by the assistant treasurer Senator Jim Short to open the superannuation market to banks and credit unions is a welcome one. Australia’s saving base is notoriously low. Anything that gives an incentive to saving is worthwhile.

Under present rules, banks have had to set up cumbersome separate trustee-type structures as subsidiaries. This has meant costs and inconvenience. The beauty of allowing banks and credit unions to get into the business directly is that they will be able to provide over-the-counter services. Superannuation will become more accessible. Under present arrangements, bumping up superannuation contributions can be difficult. With over-the-counter superannuation accounts (or even ATM accounts), customers will be able to drop savings in easily. They will see the tax advantages very quickly. Superannuation earnings are taxed at a far lower rate than ordinary interest earnings. But once someone takes the tax advantage, they cannot later withdraw the earnings without pay the difference in tax (unless they have reached retirement). The incentive to keep the savings in place is obvious.
Continue reading “1996_03_march_leader23mar”