Crispin Hull

It was fairly predictable that New Zealand would be facing a period of political uncertainty, and perhaps instability, after its first proportional-system election. That does not mean proportional voting systems are to be condemned out of hand. Electoral systems have to balance fairness against simplicity and stability.

The first-past-the-post system that the proportional system replaced had many defects, particularly in the nation without the balancing influence of other sources of power like an Upper House or state legislatures. Typically, it meant that a party with less than 40 per cent of the vote would get 60 per cent of the seats and get unchecked majority government to do what it likes for three years. New Zealanders got sick of some of the extreme policies that this system produced and opted for a new proportional system.

The new system has its defects and will need some fine tuning.

Under the new system, New Zealanders vote for 60 single-member constituency seats in the old way with a cross for the candidate they want and the candidate with the most votes getting the seat. They also vote for a party on the national list for a further 60 seats. These are allocated to parties as a top up to any constituency seats to that the overall result is that each party gets a quota of MPs in exact proportion to its percentage of the party-list vote.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader15oct nz poll”

The ACT Liberal Party’s organisational wing has over-reacted to the Andrews Bill on euthanasia. It is to put a motion to the federal council of the party in Hobart next month saying that the independence of the ACT “”is best guaranteed through statehood”, and that statehood should be discussed at the constitutional convention and put in place by 2000. Fortunately, the ACT parliamentary party has disowned the idea.

A separate resolution affirms the right of the parliaments of the states and territories to make laws for their citizens and for the federal parliament to respect those laws. That resolution makes more sense, but it is still flawed in the case of the ACT and still cast too widely.

The trouble with the resolutions is that if, or more like when, they are defeated, it will be seen as a defeat for self-determination for the people of the territories.

The Andrews Bill is an inappropriate infringement of the rights of people in the territories. It singles out one head of power and takes it away from the territory legislatures. Where will it end? Anything the territory legislatures to that offends the morality of a federal MP will be subject to federal veto. But statehood for the ACT is not the answer.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader11oct statehood”

The ACT Government is in an unenviable position over people who persistently behave in a erratic manner in neighbourhoods. In the most recent case residents in a Tuggeranong suburb say they complained to the Government about the behaviour of one woman who had put them in fear with her conduct. They also complained to The Canberra Times and an article was published quoting the residents’ complaints. Several weeks later the woman committed suicide.

It then becomes easy to blame the government for inaction. Or, indeed, to blame the media for airing the residents’ complaints, or to blame the residents. Post-hoc judgments are easy.

But what was the government to do in this case? The woman had not been charged with any crime, so authorities could not take her in to custody on that score. She had not herself sought help and been turned away. If that had been the case, a blame-laying exercise might have some validity. But the government cannot force people to be helped. Apparently, she was not in such a state that she could have been put into custody under the Mental Health Act. But her behaviour was certainly abnormal to the extent that residents felt their quiet enjoyment was being disturbed. Her house was apparently a mess and she verbally abused people, apparently saying she had a gun.

It is easy to say that if the government had taken her from her home, the death might have been prevented. But the consequences of such a policy would be that very many eccentric people would have to be taken away from their homes on the bias that they might commit suicide or because neighbours do not like the eccentricity. That would be unacceptable. The government should not be blamed for this woman’s death. Nor should there be major changes to policy as a result of it. Sometimes we have to accept that government cannot cure all human ills nor be responsible for all human action.

One of the most important reasons for encouraging free speech is that ideas are put to the test of vigorous debate. A free-speech society allows the expression of ideas, however distasteful they may be to a majority or however wrong the majority may feel those ideas to be. The reason is that only through communication can faulty ideas be corrected. Only through communication can valuable new ways of looking at things, which ultimately benefit humankind, be accepted. And the freer that communication, the quicker the spread of the ideas and the quicker the good ones get accepted. Without free speech and with those in power suppressing free speech the valuable and better ways at looking at things take longer to surface, to the detriment of humankind.

Thus the vast majority of people who before Copernicus wrote On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543 thought the earth was flat was only turned into a tiny minority of the ignorant or foolish after the communication of the idea became freer. It took quite some time.

But freedom of communication comes at a price. It means bigoted, mean-spirited and idiotic things get communicated. Indeed, perhaps more rubbish gets stated than truth. None the less, it is a price well worth paying, so that the good things come out.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader10oct hanson”

The patience of the Protestant para-military groups will be severely tested by the two bombs in Northern Ireland on Monday night. The patience of the British and Irish Governments will be tested even further. And the security arrangements of the British armed forces in Northern Ireland have been tested and found wanting. The two car bombs went off inside the British army’s heavily defended headquarters.

So far no-one has claimed responsibility for the bombs, but the finger has been pointed at the IRA. The political wing of the IRA, the Sinn Fein, headed by Gerry Adams, has distanced itself for the bombing. Mr Adams says the only way to prevent further violence is for his organisation to be admitted to the peace talks. Sinn Fein has been excluded to date because it refused to renounce violence unconditionally.

The bomb, which injured 31 people, was the first in Northern Ireland for two years and threatens the fragile cease-fire being adhered to by the Protestant side, but breached by the IRA with bombings in the mainland. It is possible that the bombs will trigger a Protestant retaliation which would return the province to tit-for-tat bombing and shooting that marred the past 25 years.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader09oct”

The NSW Government has got itself into a fearful mess over the M4 and M5 motorways. In Opposition, the now Premier, Bob Carr, promised to abolish the tolls. On obtaining power he found that the projected cost of doing it was double the original estimate of $73 million. This was because of hidden federal tax implications arising from the compensation payable to the tollway companies. The promise was therefore not honoured.

The failure to keep the promise has cost the Carr Government politically, according to opinion polls in the electorates affected in western Sydney. It is a classic exaggerated single issue _ where a significant number of voters will change their vote on that issue alone. In this instance, $750 a year was at stake for regular users of the M4 and $1250 for the M5. It was an artful bribe before the election because it was geographically targeted and effective. A counter-promise by the other side would have been seen as cynical catch-up politics.

After the election, when the promise could not be fulfilled the bitterness continued. It had to be dealt with, no matter how irresponsible and ill-thought-out the original promise and no matter the cost of the bail out.

So the NSW Government has come up with a costly and cumbersome scheme under which regular users get a card to swipe through a reader at the tollway each day when they pay their toll. At the end of the year they can claim a refund. It is restricted to non-commercial vehicles and will only be worthwhile for regulars. In short, the bail out is as artful and irresponsible as the original promise; it is targeted to regular users who also happen to be geographically concentrated group of voters, who purely co-incidentally will be voting in the Lindsay by-election in two weeks. It is enough to make anyone cynical.

There was no victory for News Ltd, or the ARL, yesterday. There was no victory for the game of rugby league or the spectators. No David. No Goliath. News Ltd would like to portray itself as the champion of competition, freedom of trade and server of the consumer. The ARL would like to portray itself as upholder of the best traditions of the game in the interests of players and spectators alike. Their conduct shows the contrary.

News Ltd’s motive was greed. It wanted a spectacle for its pay television network and went out to buy or expropriate the ARL’s infrastructure. Yesterday’s judgment makes it clear that News Ltd is still liable in damages for inducing people to breach contracts and other civil wrongs arising from its attack on the ARL.

The ARL has also behaved badly. It never once, in the interests of the cohesion of the game, the desires of spectators and the long-term livelihood of the players, sought compromise or accommodation. Rather it drew up the drawbridge. It may well have been within its legal rights to seek damages and restraining orders. In the end, though, it was just lucky to get the comprehensive orders in the initial action and has ended up with an order for yet-to-be-assessed damages. Whatever money it gets will by a pyrrhic victory. Most of it will go on lawyer or losses sustained through the debilitating effect of the legal fight on the game.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader05oct arl”

It is difficult to say what is more foolish: the behaviour of Australian Treasurer Peter Costello or the behaviour of the US financial markets. Mr Costello was is in Washington for an International Monetary Fund and World Bank meeting and had a private meeting with the head of the US Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan. Afterwards he very foolishly gave an on the record interview with Australian journalists. This was given in the context of financial market tea-leaf watchers predicting that interest rates would rise and that Mr Greenspan, like most central-bank chiefs, does not make public comments about interest rates.

Mr Costello told the journalists, “”He [Mr Greenspan] indicated to me that he saw no threats to inflation down the track and this of course was our own view too. I don’t think there is any expectation at . . . the moment that rates are going to rise.”

This was reported in the Australian Financial Review and picked up by the US media. The markets then moved accordingly. Prices of bonds and shares moved in the direction you would expect if an expected interest rate rise were cancelled … long-term bond rates fells and share prices rose.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader04oct costello”

New Zealanders go to the polls in a little over a week’s time. It will be the first election under a new electoral system. In the past New Zealand has used the British system of simple-majority, single-member electorates. Voters put a cross against one candidate and the candidate with the most votes won the seats. The party with the most seats won government. It had the virtues of simplicity and stability. It was stable because it is usual for the two major parties to win all but one or two seats and for one of them to have a clear majority. Further, as New Zealand has no upper house, it has meant that governments invariably could run a full term.

But it also meant that there were few checks to Executive power. Governments could get Parliament to rubber-stamp any legislation they wanted. It resulted in widespread, sudden and major reforms: wholesale privatisation and deregulation and sweeping industrial-relations changes. For some it provided opportunity and made things more efficient and vibrant. For others it made the world less certain, cut their pay and cut government services that they had relied upon.

It made New Zealanders think that the winner-take-all electoral system required reform. They thought that a system in which, typically, a political party with 40 per cent of the vote got 55 to 60 per cent of the seats and total control of government was not such a good thing. They thought it unfair that minor parties, especially those opposed to some of the radical reforms put forward by Labour and the Nationals, got a significant amount of the votes, but very few, if any, seats.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader03oct nzpoll”

The Federal Government has decided against a full-scale public inquiry into media ownership in Australia. Instead it will conduct an internal departmental inquiry based on written submissions. Some will argue that this is a breach of an election promise, but the extent and nature of the inquiry was never fully articulated.

There is not a lot of advantage in a public inquiry into media ownership, or indeed any significant policy issue in Australia. Public inquiries, with their courtroom-style of witnesses and cross-examination, may be suitable for investigating malfeasance of one sort or another, but the process is too cumbersome for policy matters. Worse, this sort of process almost inevitably becomes adversary and tends to turn into examination of past conduct of individuals, rather than genuine inquiry of what should happen in the future. The previous parliamentary public inquiry into media ownership did precisely this. It was as if Kerry Packer, Conrad Black and Bob Hawke were on trial. The public, oral process tends to invite grandstanding and posturing.

The proposed process of written submissions gives ample opportunity for with a genuine interest in broadcasting law to put their views. It will also allow for the inquiry itself to see further clarification from those who put in written submissions.
Continue reading “1996_10_october_leader03oct media inquiry”