Crispin Hull

The ACT will go to the polls in February with how-to-vote cards, the last contentious issue in the new electoral laws.

The ACT will have three electorates of seven, five and five members with Robson rotation and no form of party-line voting on the Tasmanian model.

Abolish Self-Government MLA Dennis Stevenson sided with the Government to accept how-to-vote cards.

How-to-vote cards are not permitted in Tasmania, but the issue was not put as part of the 1992 referendum which voted 70-30 in favour of Hare-Clark and Robson rotation.
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A form of party-line voting for the ACT Legislative Assembly election is not out of the question, following an all-party meeting of MLAs on the electoral law yesterday.

The Liberal Party and two Independents, Michael Moore and Helen Szuty, are vehemently against any form of party-line voting. However, an alliance of maverick independent Dennis Stevenson and the Labor could result in a de-facto party-list system.

The 1992 referendum voted 70-30 in favour of the Tasmanian Hare-Clark with Robson rotation system. Under Robson rotation there are no party boxes like the Senate. Party candidates are not put in a set order on the ballot paper. The ballot papers are printed in batches. Some batches might have Follett in the No 3 spot with Lamont No 1 and Connolly No 2; other batches have Connolly No 1, Follett No 2 and Wood No 3 and so on. Voters place the candidates in the order they want.
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A group of 19 residents groups would launch a campaign to seek rates reductions for people affected by dual occupancy, a spokesperson said yesterday.

The group, representing suburbs all over Canberra, says that people whose living amenity has been permanent affected by nearby dual occupancies should get a reduction in rates because their unimproved land values had been affected.

The president of the Conservation Council of Canberra, Jacqui Rees, whose council is chairing the group, said the Save Our City Coalition would urge people affected to lodge objections to their unimproved land value valuations at rates-assessment time.

This had been decided at a meeting of the group on Thursday night.
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It may have been intentional, but The Canberra Times computer pages that day ran what could only be The Guardian’s April Fools’ Day spoof as a real computer story.

The story told of how newspapers had first got rid of linotype operators and keyboard operators when journalists keyed directly in to computers. Then newspapers got rid of compositors as full-page make-up was done on computers. Now, it was the journalists’ turn, the spoof reported. A program costing a couple of hundred dollars could generate sports stories, complete with cliches, after basic information was fed to it.

The spoof told of how several newspapers in the Mid-West of the US had replaced some sports writers with the program.
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“They come off the dual carriageway with their mind in neutral and hit the Lake George stretch.”

The change in the road conditions without a change in driver concentration is what causes the prangs on the Lake George stretch according to Collector’s lone policeman, Constable First Class Jack O’Brien.

Every town has his quirks. In Collector it’s prangs.
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THE ACT Government is seeking views on third-party (personal injury) motor vehicle insurance and has put out a discussion paper.

It says the premium will have to rise by $80 unless something is done.

Of course, the political pressure is to keep the premium low because nearly every voter has to pay it. There is little imperative to keep benefits and damages high because only a few are injured.

The paper says there have been an increase in minor claims (under $25,000) to 75 per cent of claims which take 40 per cent of total payouts.
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STUART Littlemore is right. (Gosh, that hurt.) In last Monday’s Media Watch on ABC TV he said present arrangements for bringing errant journalists to book were defective.

Journalists, including this one, frequently get stuck into the professions for being closed shops, arrogant and unanswerable.

Journalists themselves, however, have to some degree escaped public accountability. There have been five mitigating factors. First, there has been an unenforceable and half-hearted tradition of “”right of reply” through the letters column. Second, there has always been the right to sue for defamation (if you have the patience of Job and the pocket of Kerry Packer). Third, there has been the right to go to the Press Council. Fourth, the journalists’ union runs an ethics committee, which once in a blue moon hears a complaint from the public. Fifth, members of the public can sometimes (at an editor’s whim) get to write articles under their own name.

All of the above, except the complaint to the ethics committee, require lodging a complaint with the media proprietor. This does not make the journalist individually accountable. Nor does it redress the situation where the journalist is under proprietorial pressure (explicit or cultural) to write in a certain way.
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HISTORY has become unfashionable. In universities it has had to compete with sociology and communications for the hearts (and sometimes the minds) of students. Superficially, the information age makes history less important. We have so much information preserved and stored that there is no room for the historian to tell the story.

A example arose last week, however, that shows the “”information-communications” explosion makes history even more important.

The book, “”The Last Shilling. A History of Repatriation in Australia” was launched. Sounds dry, but it is written with verve, sympathy and an eye for human interest. The bit on Agent Orange interested me.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Vietnam veterans were agitating for a better deal and better recognition. They felt that the widespread opposition to the war was resulting in them getting less sympathy than other veterans, and because of the nature of the war (it was not a “”real” one), they were getting less respect than other veterans.
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THE Industry and Trade Practices Commissions have conducted half a dozen major inquiries over the past few years. Nearly all of them have been into the people we love to hate: oil companies, real-estate agents and lawyers for example.

(Journalists, among those Stuart Littlemore and others love to hate, incidentally, have rightly escaped their attention, for we have a fairly open profession. Ring-ins like John Howard and Bill Mandle are permitted.)

The commissions is out to get monopolies. They hate laws which give the professions exclusive practice rights, high entry requirements and expensive in-club practices.

Indeed, it is now at a stage that I cannot see why the commissions should bother with expensive inquiries inthe future. You can be reasonably confident of what their findings will be on any topic well beforehand: repeal all special laws pertaining to that industry or profession, allow others in to do at least some of the work, lower professional entry standards, insist on uniform professional standards across the states, allow practitioners to move between states without hassle and to rely on general trade-practices provisions to ensure competition, truthful advertising and consumer protection.
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The Building Owners and Managers Association condemned the ACT Government yesterday for failing to have a policy on renewal of commercial leases.

BOMA’s ACT president, Tony Hedley, said the automatic-renewal policy of 99-year residential leases was a good one, but there was no policy on what would happen when a commercial lease ran out. This was worrying for owners and financiers.

Financiers did not understand the ACT’s leasehold system very well and it made the ACT less competitive for development over the states.

He told a BOMA lunch that he had invited the Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, to put the Government’s position at the lunch.
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