Crispin Hull

This time last year the Australian Football League was under attack for the unfairness of its finals series.

This year it has changed the system slightly. The result is a completely fair finals system. Let me explain.

Last year the AFL had just moved from having a final five to having a final six.

The new final-six system was branded as unfair. It was unfair (for reasons which don’t matter now) and needed modifications. As a result of the changes no-one should complain. This is what happens:
Continue reading “1992_09_september_afl”

Mao’s dictum that power comes from the barrel of a gun does not apply in a stable democracy, like Australia. Rather it comes from money, influence and knowledge.

Those three combined with peculiar force in the person of Hungarian migrant Emil Herbert Abeles one day in November, 1988. That day, the by then Sir Peter Abeles, went to Kirribilli House, the official Sydney residence of the Prime Minister. Here he witnessed a deal between his longtime friend and now Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, and the then Treasurer, Paul Keating. The other witness was the secretary of the ACTU, Bill Kelty.

The two witnesses gave a promise of secrecy, which they kept. The Prime Minister gave a promise that he would step down in favour of Keating before the 1990 election, which he did not keep.
Continue reading “1992_09_september_abeles”

Ms. Browning was acquitted of four charges of being knowingly concerned with the fire-bombing or attempted fire-bombing of cars belonging to US or South African diplomats. She was found guilty of threatening the then US Ambassador, William Lane, in 1988.

It was made by Mandy King who made the much acclaimed Shadow Over East Timor. This one does not deserve the same acclaim.

Its conclusions arise out of juxtaposition and assertion rather than evidence.

At one stage Ms Browning says that the Australian Federal Police got a search warrant to search her house, and said plaintively: they came in whether you liked it or not. Well, I would have thought that was the very idea of a search warrant.
Continue reading “1992_07_july_kerry”

Australians should reject the cow-cocky, one-paddock-at-a-time mentality when talking about a republic, the Australian author Thomas Keneally said yesterday.

He rebuffed critics of the Australian Republic Movement who said that the idea of a republic was only fit for discussion in good times. Those critics thought that to discuss a republic was “”a wilful slight to the economically decimated.”

People in the republican movement were as aware as any of other issues: unemployment, the environment, Aboriginal sovereignty and so on.

He rejected the logic of those who said the economy must come first and republicanism be put aside.
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Spartacus was perhaps first to put human rights on “”the agenda”. He did it in Roman times. Since then it has dropped off and come back on without especial rhyme or reason. Joan of Arc, Lord Shaftsbury, Abraham Lincoln have tried to put human rights “”on the agenda” at different times and in different places.

On-again off-again has been the case in Australia. The leaders of the Rum Rebellion, Lalor, Caroline Chisholm are cases in point. In the meantime, of course, other have been trying to keep human rights off the agenda: Julius Caesar, the Revered Samuel Marsden and Vladimir Lenin spring to mind.

The point is that human rights cannot be dismissed as the fruits of the idleness of the chattering classes or the looney left. Nor can the calls for a Bill of Rights.
Continue reading “1992_07_july_hr”

An organisation to defend the Constitution has been formed and will have its inaugural conference in Melbourne this weekend.

The Samuel Griffith Society, named after the first Chief Justice aims to: defend the Australian Constitution against all who would attempt to undermine it and in particular to oppose the further centralisation of power in Canberra.

Among the founders is John Stone, former National Party Senator and Secretary of the Treasury.

Speakers at this weekend’s conference include former Chief Justice Sir Harry Gibbs, Hugh Morgan, chief executive of Western Mining; journalist Frank Devine; lawyer Dr Colin Hughes and Dr David Chessell from Access Economics.
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There was a second element to Gough Whitlam’s famous “”maintain your rage” speech on November 11, 1975.

He also urged those gathered before Parliament House to “”maintain your enthusiasm”.

Seventeen years later he was still at it: taking an active part in public debate of constitutional issues and urging students to maintain their enthusiasm for it.

In the Senate chamber of the old Parliament yesterday, Mr Whitlam called for a Republic, yet again. He told about 400 law student students (crammed into the chamber which 17 years before had denied Mr Whitlam’s Government Supply) that Australia should have a President elected by a secret ballot of a joint sitting of the two Federal Houses of Parliament.
Continue reading “1992_07_july_gough”

The sign was on the colonnade next to fish pond at University House, scene of quiet academic debate in Canberra for more than 30 years. The fish obeyed the sign. It was a brilliant Canberra winter’s day.

The meeting was the ANU Centre for International and Public Law’s conference on Australia and Human Rights.

Suddenly a hand-held megaphone shattered the quiet: “”What about human right in East Timor. Stop the genocide.”

Human rights were on test. The Foreign Minister, Senator Gareth Evans, was to address the conference.
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The Federal Court has ruled that the plan of management for south-east Australia is based on a statistical fallacy.

The fallacy caused an absurd result.

The court did not overturn the whole plan, but is fairly clear from Justice Maurice O’Loughlin’s judgment that he would be prepared to unless the Australian Fisheries Management Authority did something about the plan or at least gave some redress to a fishing company that brought the action saying it had been badly treated.

A spokeswoman for the authority said yesterday that the authority’s board is meeting today (thursjul30) and tomorrow (frijul31) to discuss what it will do.
Continue reading “1992_07_july_fish”

The garden city is in peril, according to the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.

The institute says, “”The Garden city image of Canberra will inevitably decline if the (ACT) Government’s attitude to urban landscaping continues.”

The institute was responding to the ACT Government’s call for submissions on its capital works proposals for 1992-93. Its president, Judy Butt, said yesterday that the decline the standard of public works in the ACT was not restricted to the parliamentary triangle.
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