Crispin Hull

The ACT has the advantage of being a new polity. It can learn from the mistakes of other states and territories.

It can learn from Victoria and South Australia: do not get into debt. It can learn from Western Australia: do not sell your government to “”mates”. It can learn from the Northern Territory: the Federal tit can dry up. It can learn from the Fraser Federal Government: do not indulge in the political cop out of across-the-board cuts.

Then again, it can fall into the same mistakes.
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QUEEN’S Counsel once did the work of the Crown for nothing. That is how they got the title. It doesn’t happen now, of course: they charge.

This week Lloyd Waddy, QC, however, was going back to the traditional role of Queen’s Counsel: arguing the Crown case for no charge.

Waddy, a founding member of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, argues with the flourish and language that you might expect from a director of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, without straying too far from logic and fact.
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The conclusions of an inquiry into a North Canberra redevelopment have been rejected as illogical and outrageous by the Canberra Conservation Council.

Some of the conclusions into Section 22, Torrens Street, Braddon, were leaked to The Canberra Times and published yesterday. The full report will be tabled in the Legislative Assembly this week.

The council’s president, Jacqueline Rees, said the inquiry, headed by former Administrative Appeals Tribunal president Robert Todd, had ruled inadmissible any queries or statements related to possible improprieties and had refused to contemplate any evidence relating to it, saying it was beyond its terms of reference.
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The reason the Labor and Liberal Members of the Assembly agreed to an inquiry into Section 22 was to give those named by Independent MLA Michael Moore a chance to clear their names.

In the earlier debate Mr Moore said there was “”a smell” involving departmental and developer “”mates” who drank at the Kingston pub. He named one of the principals of Bobundra Pty Ltd, the Sector 22 developer, Peter Phillips, who is also the chair of the ACT Electricity and Water, and the secretary of the Department of Land Planning and Environment, Jeff Townsend, among others.

Those named have got every right to be aggrieved by this inquiry. Very simply, they were not given a chance to clear their names. Mr Todd skipped the issue. It seems incredible that he has narrowed his inquiry to planning issues when it is obvious from the most cursory reading of the Assembly debate that the main reason for the inquiry was to give them that chance. I believe both Mr Phillips and Mr Townsend pressed him to widen his inquiry so they could clear their names.
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Some of the planning procedures in the ACT were “bordering on the bizarre”, an inquiry into a North Canberra redevelopment proposal has found.

The findings of the inquiry by former Administrative Appeals. Tribunal member Robert Todd were tabled in the Legislative Assembly yesterday. They prompted the Minister for Land, Environment and Planning,

Bill Wood, to confirm a review of some provisions of the Land Act and to improve the consultation process. Mr Todd was commissioned by the Assembly to inquire into difficulties surrounding a redevelopment proposal at Torrens Street, Braddon.
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M Butterfly should fly away according to the new chair of the Federal Parliamentary Joint Committee on the ACT, Bob Chynoweth.

He thinks the advertising sign on the Canberra Theatre’s fly tower should come down.

He said at the handing down the committee’s report on nearby City Hill, “”I am concerned that the theatre is using its tower as an advertising billboard for Mobilenet or Telecom sq(the sponsors of the present production of M Butterfly.”
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The history of adoption shows that fairly clearly. Half a century ago Nanny was convinced that with adoption, for example, secrecy was the best policy.

No adopted child was to know his or her natural mother. Natural mothers could not find out what had happened to the child she gave had given away two decades before. The theory was that, once given away, the child would become the child of the new family. There could be no half-way house, Nanny ruled.

In Australia, of course, Nanny was hopelessly wrong in its policy on Aboriginal children, taking children away from natural parents to be assimilated.
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A Canberra couple seeking a surrogate mother have been “flooded with calls”, since their story was published in The Canberra Times on Monday. Peter and Wendy Voelker, of Gordon, say they are certain of getting a surrogate mother to help.

Mrs Voelker, who is on constant medication to control epilepsy, has had three miscarriages.

The couple has made inquiries about adoption, but say they have been told the position is virtually hopeless and that there is a 10-year waiting list.
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Story Basket Keyword Topic Author Page Jsums27, 30 Age-old maths problem finally starts to add NEW YORK: June 23 AP Geniuses of the world, take note: Finish that symphony, paint that masterpiece, discover the secret of perpetual motion. Your efforts at solving Fermat’s Last Theorem are probably no longer needed. A mathematician claims to have solved the most famous problem in mathematics with a twisting, 200-page argument proving Fermat’s theorem. “When we heard it, people started walking on air,” the chairman of Princeton University’s mathematics

read sums127 EPORT HDR (Form Read)Depth 115.0 mm Width 324.0 pointsJustified E Length 115.0 mm Story Edit Styl Output Loc Category ,gm,30 Age-old maths problem[QC]finally starts to add upleg, NEW YORK: June 23 AP Geniuses of the world, take note: Finish that symphony, paint that masterpiece, discover the secret of perpetual motion. Your efforts at solving Fermat’s Last Theorem are probably no longer needed.A mathematician claims to have solved the most famous problem in Page1 Story continues …
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It was just as well there was a second lot of veal in the freezer. I’ll get back the the veal in a minute. But first to the aggravation that led to the destruction of the first lot.

I knew it might happen; Hugh MacKay had predicted it. MacKay is the great Australian sociologist who has a theory about people in modern Australia snapping under stress. He says that the pressures of earning a living and the hassles of home and mortgages etc etc make people suddenly react to the most trivial things in a violent and exaggerated way.

People, like me, who would ordinarily never allow themselves to act violently, suddenly find themselves smashing parking inspectors in the face. They snap because of the great build up of pressure in modern life.
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