Crispin Hull

The Landlords Association has decided to campaign for Molonglo Liberal candidate Lucinda Spier. The association’s president, Peter Jansen, said yesterday that he had mailed his 800-odd members calling for help on polling day. Ms Spier has mailboxed how-to-vote cards in the electorate which does not mention other Liberal candidates and only mentions the fact she is a Liberal in small type. Ms Spier has seen the material Mr Jansen has put out and agrees with it. Ms Spier has been in strife with the party over issuing policy statements as the chair of the Canberra Rates Association without clearing them, as other candidates have agreed to do. Her how-to-vote cards suggest only a Spier 1 vote. They are authorised by the Liberal Party’s ACT branch president Dawn Crosby. Mr Jansen said Ms Spier was “”the only candidate who had a proven track record of standing up for the rights of ratepayers and landlords”.

He expected to man every polling booth in Molonglo. He wanted Ms Spier to “”hold the balance of power in the Assembly” _ a term usually reserved for people outside the major parties. Mr Jansen said, “”Without Lucinda the other parties will continue to “”rip off” property owners via rates and taxes. . . . The Liberals have reneged on their promise to abolish land tax.” On land tax, Ms Spier said Liberal policy was that no tax would be higher than those in NSW, so land tax should have a threshold, like in NSW. Mr Jansen said the association intended to hold a rally on February 15, which is the rates instalment due date.

This view expressed by one of my colleagues the other day ignored Tom Stoppard’s pearl of wisdom: “”Democracy does not lie in the voting, but in the counting.” I explained to him that the seven-crosses system was used for the Senate before World War II with ridiculous results. Inevitably, one party got all the seats. Say you have 100,000 voters and 55 per cent vote Liberal. They all put seven crosses by seven Liberal candidates. The remaining 45,000 vote Labor and they all put seven crosses by seven Labor candidates. The result is that each Liberal candidate has 55,000 crosses and each Labor candidate has 45,000 votes. Seven Liberals are elected and no Labor. Whereas, electoral justice in those circumstances would demand say 4 Liberal and 3 Labor. “”Point taken,” said my colleague. “”So how do all these quotas and preferences work?” A simple system does not mean a fair system. Similarly a system that is difficult to understand is not necessarily unfair or should be done away with.

The Hare-Clark system is complex and fair _ if you define fair as providing seats in reasonable proportion to votes and at the same time giving some geographical representation. The ACT has been divided into three electorates: Ginninderra, based on Belconnen, with five seats; Brindabella, based on Tuggeranong, also with five seats and Molonglo, based in the centre, with seven seats. In the five-seat electorates a candidate needs one sixth of the vote plus one to get elected.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_hccount”

The faction-ridden Labor Party will have to seriously re-think its pre-selection methods and how-to-vote ticket following last Saturday’s election. The irony in the position of the left’s David Lamont illustrates the point. Before the election, Labor pre-selected a ticket and issued a how-to-vote card in an attempt to overcome the Robson rotation of candidates’ names on the ballot paper. Conversely, the Liberals did not recommend an order of names. The result was that the first-preference Liberal vote was spread among its candidates more evenly (especially in Brindabella and Ginninderra, where there was no Carnell factor).

The Labor first preference, on the other hand, was much more concentrated beside the name of the person on the top of Labor’s how-to-vote card _ except in Brindabella where the two sitting members attracted a high personal vote. The lack of spread in Labor means that some minor-party and independent candidates have more first preferences than Labor’s second and third candidates. It means that as the count progresses on Saturday Labor’s second and third candidates are more likely to be eliminated than minor and independent candidates _ because elimination is determined according to a candidate’s individual first preference vote, not the party vote as a whole. In Molonglo Lamont (on 1158) is behind the first-preference count of both the leading Green (3,942) and Moore Independent (4442) and is about equal with the Democrats (1103). He may get some trickle down of Follett’s over-quota, but not enough to over-take Moore.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_hareclar”

Tomorrow Canberrans will vote in the third election since self-government in 1989. Canberrans will vote for 17 Members of the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly has wide powers to make laws for the Act and to administer those laws. It has both state and local-government functions and therefore can affect people’s lives more profoundly than a state parliament or a local council. It is important, therefore, that Canberrans and others who live in the ACT cast their vote in an informed way. To that end The Canberra Times is publishing this eight-page guide to the election. It contains both the essentials and a more detailed looked at the election.

There is a guide to the Hare-Clark system, the for and against case for the referendum on the electoral system, a look at the policies of the major parties and leading minors and independents by Canberra Times journalists who have followed the issues over the campaign. There is also a potted form guide of the candidates and a history of self-government. At present the Assembly comprises eight Labor, six Liberal, two Moore Independents and one Abolish Self-Government MLA.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_fronter”

Taxpayers’ money is being wasted by the Department of Environment Land and Planning in a Supreme Court appeal against the Land and Planning Appeal Board which would help a developer, according to a Forrest residents’ group. And the department is under fire from Ainslie residents for taking a year and a lot of taxpayers’ money to enforce the demolition of what they say the department acknowledges is an illegal structure. The Forrest case is over a proposal by Scott Brothers to put units on a site in Tennyson Crescent.

The department granted a lease variation and the Forrest Heritage Action Group appealed to the board winning a series of concessions on setback and plot ratio that would probably make the development uneconomic. The department has appealed against that to the Supreme Court. The Minister for Environment land and Planning, Bill Wood, said the decision had been taken in the caretaker period and it was an appeal on questions of law. He said there was a settling in for the new independent board and the extent of its powers needed to be tested. The department was not siding with anyone.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_forrest”

Latin names for bugs in italic please with Upper case first letter of firt word and the rest lower case please.) It was autumn _ Canberra’s best season. Sixty people had been invited to the wedding and spit-roast feast. The caterer inserted a roasting spear into a large chunk of beef in a dry-heat spit at 11am and it cooked for seven hours when it was taken to the reception. There it was reheated until the guests were due to eat 8pm.

Little did the 60 guests know that in addition to their serving of meat they were also getting servings of Clostridium perfringens, a nasty little bacterium, but fortunately for them not the nastiest of the Clostridium type. Now just as the guests were enjoying their juicy off-the-spit roast, so were the Clostridium perfringens. Bacteria like meat because it is high in moisture, rich in nitrogenous foods and has lots of minerals fermentable carbohydrates and favourable pH. The Clostridium perfringens went forth a multiplied. Some guests either batted on or returned the next day for lunch, at which they were served more of the beef and even greater amounts of the Clostridium perfringens. We know this because people talk. You can imagine the conversation. “”How did you pull up after the wedding, mate?” “”Jeez, I was crook. I chundered my heart out. I swear, I’m going off the grog.” “”So did my mum, she doesn’t even drink.” “”Yeah. That’s odd. Bill’s old man’s been off the grog for months, and he chundered, too.” “”Musta been the mushrooms.” “”Oh, beawdy. I can go back on the grog.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that a lot of food poisoning it unreported because victims put it down to booze. In this case, though, they slowly came to the conclusion that they got food poisoning at the wedding and reported it. And so it was that the ACT Public and Environmental Health Service wrote up the case in the Journal of Communicable Disease Intelligence. It told of 10 cases of diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, fever, headache and dizziness. They were lucky. It could have been a nastier bacterium. Next to that report was another report of food poisoning at another wedding reception at a tennis club in rural Victoria. In the Canberra case, apparently the spear was the problem. “”The spear was stored in a garage and could easily have been exposed to possible contamination by soil, dust, vermin or flies,” the report said. It gave a Holmesian analysis as to why the zucchini salad and other items were ruled out. The pH level was too low. And why didn’t we hear about this in the court pages of The Canberra Times under the headline “”Caterer fined for poisoning guests” (they don’t jail people in Canberra)? Well, the service believes that it is more useful to educate caterers so they don’t do it again. So you can breathe more easily if you attended a spit-roast function after March last year. Food poisoning costs an estimated $2 billion a year in Australia _ in lost work time, medical and other costs. Much of this could be prevented with greater understanding of what causes food poisoning and what lowers the risk of it happening.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_foodfeat”

Canberra has the potential to be one of cities most at risk from cases of food poisoning, according to ACT health officers. Despite its clean, affluence image with a diligent bureaucracy taking care of every aspect of our lives, there are key factors about Canberra that increase the risk of food poisoning. The director of the Public and Environmental and health Service, Alec Percival, said this week that society had to get away from the clean-floors-and-walls mentality with food poisoning. His message was that the food poisoning was caused by microbes, not dirt.

The big risk came when food was left too long a tepid temperatures _ higher than four degrees and lower than 60 degrees _ even if that was in a spotless kitchen. Canberra’s extra risk comes because it has more two-income families than average. This results in a greater use of quick pre-cooked meals and a greater danger that cooked food gets contaminated and is not sufficiently re-heated to kill the bacteria and toxins. Canberra’s affluence means more people eat out. Canberra has about one restaurant seat for 18 people; Geelong, for example, has one seat for 80. Eating out can increase risk because cooking is done in bulk and often pre-cooked and, unless the preparer has bulk cooling, food is more likely to be at tepid temperatures for longer. Canberra, being recently self-governing, had not until recently developed the legislative regimes of the states to deal with food poisoning and other environmental health matters _ and is still catching up in some areas. General licensing for all people selling food in the ACT came into effect only last year; before that only some food sellers had to be licensed. Food poisoning costs Australia about $2 billion a year in lost work, medical and other costs. Mr Percival’s service wants to educate rather than prosecute.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_food”

Who? Everyone over 18 on the rolls must vote tomorrow. Where? You can vote at any polling place in the ACT and Bateman’s Bay, irrespective of which electorate you are enrolled in. A full list is on Page ….. When? Polling booths are open from 8am to 6pm. What? You are voting for 17 Members of the ACT Legislative Assembly. Five will be elected for the Belconnen-based electorate of Ginninderra, five for Tuggeranong-based Brindabella and seven for the central-based Molonglo.

You will also be voting in a referendum to entrench the Hare-Clark voting system. This system was approved by 65 per cent of voters at an advisory referendum in 1992. Tomorrow’s referendum is to ensure that only a two-thirds majority of the Assembly or a further referendum can change it or replace it with another system. How. In the referendum you must write the word “”Yes” or “”No”. In the election for Member you must use numbers. Do not use ticks or crosses anywhere on either ballot paper.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_exyguide”

A Labor Government would have to transfer 700 Department of Environment, Land and Planning staff from Tuggeranong to Gungahlin if its new-building plan is to be economic. This was the Liberals’ response yesterday to Labor’s election promise to build two new public-service buildings in Gungahlin and Civic at a total cost of $80 million. Labor says construction the buildings will give a boost to employment in the ACT and save the Government $11.7 million a year in rent. Last year the department had an occupational health and safety dispute over the condition of the Overall Building in Northbourne Avenue which houses about 450 DELP staff. That building, of about 7000 square metres, is owned by the GIO.

A further 700 DELP staff are housed in leased premises at the Homeworld building in Tuggeranong. The Government says DELP will move to a new building in Gungahlin and the co-ordinating departments would move into a new Civic building, creating greater efficiencies and higher standard public-service offices.

The Liberals say, however, that $80 million would buy about 32,000 square metres of top space. If the money were to be split about evenly, it would mean a huge amount of spare space at Gungahlin unless DELP staff at Tuggeranong were moved into the building along with the staff from Northbourne Avenue. Opposition Leader, Kate Carnell, said it was unacceptable for a policy to be put forward that would involve major movements of staff without consultation.

Eleven of the 74 ACT election candidates were eliminated yesterday and their 3000 preferences distributed, not substantially affecting the outcome.The elimination began after a check of first preferences and the spill of preferences from the only two officially elected candidates: Kate Carnell and Rosemary Follett.

In Brindabella, one excluded independent’s 105 preferences went largely to other independents, 40 per cent to Paul Osborne, but it is only shrapnel.

In Molonglo, the Greens and Michael Moore appeared to pick up the bulk of non-Labor preferences and the preferences from Labor’s excluded Silvia Zamora appeared to stay with Labor. Greg Cornwell has eliminated the remote possibility of losing his seat to any fellow Liberal.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_count”