Crispin Hull

Planning has caused great angst in Canberra since self-government. There have been numerous changes to processes, a great number of inquiries and a great deal of threatened change. In short, it has been all tunnel and no light. Both major parties have tried to please all and pleased none. The Liberals want to get rid of the leasehold system as far as the Constitution will permit. Labor has spent three years unravelling the mess created by the first Territory Plan and the 50-50 policy (which it has now abandoned) and has pinned its hope on local-area planning. Residents will not express any great confidence in that until they see it in action.

The Greens have said higher-density occupation along public transport routes is essential. They want urban villages in Canberra and want “”to produce a new city form” based on greater density and reliance on public transport, especially light rail. It is an ideological stand, contracting with the major parties and the Moore Independents who have pragmatic stands, if differing ones. Oddly, developers, who ordinarily might see the Greens as an anathema, might like helping produce the new city form, though the Greens say they will have greater government and community involvement in the redevelopment program. The Moore Independents are committed to retaining existing Canberra, especially the heritage areas, through the leasehold system and 100 per cent betterment taxes for changes in land use. They see only a limited role for in-fill. For the major parties, the common ground is that both parties have seen the electoral downside of rampant dual occupancies and both have agreed with at least the Landsdown recommendations or stricter rules to make dual occupancy more palatable.
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The deal done to allow petrol discounter Burmah into the Canberra market has cost Canberrans about $6 million, according to ANU economics researcher Sandra Navall. Ms Navall competed an honours thesis on petrol pricing last year. She argues, “”The full costs of enticing Burmah into the Canberra market have been effectively hidden. The immediate savings to motorists are not enough to offset the fall in revenue to the ACT Treasury and the losses to existing service station operators.” Burmah’s entry into the Canberra market 15 months ago has caused on-going controversy.

The Minister for Consumer Affairs, Terry Connolly, has defended the move saying it has brought cheaper petrol and something had to be done to break the stranglehold of the major oil companies. The Motor Trades Association of Australia has argued that the deal with Burmah was unfair because it got a prime site on a trunk route for virtually nothing and resulted in major losses to existing service stations. The MTAA says it was a political stunt which hid underlying costs which would have to be borne by Canberrans generally. Ms Navall calculates that the Government’s gift to Burmah was roughly a 5 cents a litre advantage over other retailers of which Burmah has passed on only 2 cents a litre to motorists. In fortuitous timing the price of crude dropped making the cut look bigger than it was. MTAA has asserted that Burmah is part of Shell in any event. It says that the cut in bowser price did not affect a large part of the market which was on other discount arrangements. Ms Navall said the ACT Treasury would lose land tax and rates revenue from existing retail petrol sites, because the values of the sites had fallen.
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Former Health and Sports Minister Wayne Berry remains the least well-thought-of key MLA, despite being out of the hot seat for 10 months, according to the latest Canberra Times-Datacol poll. The man who took over the health hot seat, Terry Connolly, appears not to have suffered from it. He remains third behind Kate Carnell and Rosemary Follett among a list of nine key ACT politicians. The poll shows that health is the issue of highest concern in the election campaign.

The poll showed that 37 per cent are very dissatisfied and 34 dissatisfied with the ACT Government’s performance on health. Only nine are satisfied and three very satisfied with 18 citing a middle-level performance.

The good news for Mr Berry is that while is overall dissatisfaction level remains at 60 per cent since last Spetember’s poll, about five per cent have moved from regarding his performance as very bad to regarding his performance as just bad. Only 6 per cent thought his performance good and 1 per cent very good. Mr Berry heads Labor’s how-to-vote ticket in Ginninderra.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_oppoll”

Today is election Number 3 under self-government and the people of the ACT are still behaving like those a grown-up children who want keep wanting to return to the luxury and comfort of their parents’ house. The house where Mum does the washing and puts delicious meals on the table, Dad provides the car keys, a comfortable roof is put over the head and there are no mortgages, petrol costs, no rent and no food costs. Sometimes there is a little tiff between parent and child, but life is easy and comfortable. There were some late teenage rumblings about leaving home which were put to the test on November 27, 1978, in the form of a referendum on self-government.

In those halcyon days the National Capital Development Commission with lashing of Federal money ran the city. The streets were clean, the hospitals and police were the best in Australia. So why change? Accordingly, 63.5 voted against full self-government; 31.1 for it; 5.4 for local government; and 1.6 voted informal. We wanted to stay with Mum and Dad. But by the mid-1980s Mum and Dad, in the form of Federal politicians, were sick of these pampered ACT children and sick of paying for their lavish upkeep. It was time for the children of the ACT to leave home and support themselves _ whether they liked it or not. And so in 1989 the children of the ACT were forced to go it alone. Moreover, they were given the power to decide how much of their income they would spend on petrol, health care and the rent. Still they hanker unrealistically after Mum and Dad’s house.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_oped17”

Idle speculation was rife in ACT politics yesterday while the work was being done by Electoral Commission staff and the scrutineers. They were speaking of seats, Ministries, deals and the Speakership. If the result is the likely one: Liberal 7, Labor 6, Greens 2, Moore 1 and Osborne 1, everything will turn on Michael Moore. Paul Osborne has said he will vote as Chief Minister the leader of the party with the most votes, which means Kate Carnell. That would give the Liberals 8. Labor can deal as much as it likes with the Greens, and still capture an equal 8. So Moore would decide. In the past six years he has supported Labor. Now it is different. Before the 1992 election he said he would support Rosemary Follett. This time he said he would decide after the election. This time he has put up with an anti-Moore campaign by Labor.

Labor’s Wayne Berry constantly tried to associate him with Abolish Self-Government MLA Dennis Stevenson. On election day Labor people handed out “”independent” how-to-vote cards in a way that confused potential Moore voters. Labor condemned him over cannabis and euthanasia. Mrs Carnell has been more sympathetic to these and Mr Moore’s agenda on open and accountable government. Of greater importance was the fact that some Liberals in Molonglo did an informal “”support Moore” campaign for Liberal preferences in the hope of defeating the Greens.
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Many ACT voters are unlikely to get a full say in how the territory is to be governed in the next three years _ especially strong Labor and strong Liberal voters. They will follow the instruction in large type on the ballot paper which says: “”Number five boxes from 1 to 5 in the order of your choice”. In smaller type it says “”Then you may show as many further preferences as you wish . . . ”. Experience shows that the vast majority of voters take the line of least resistance. In Senate elections, for example, about 80 per cent tick the party box and go home. In the ACT, a majority of voters are, unfortunately, likely to number the minimum five boxes. This is likely to be especially true of major-party voters. (For Molonglo read seven where I have written five.) Many voters mistakenly feel that preferences are only important if you vote for a minor party. We hear much of preferences from the Democrats and Greens in Federal elections, for example. How they flow is critical to whether Labor or Liberal win the election. Under the Hare-Clark system, however, the reverse is true. Preferences from the major parties to the minor parties are of greater importance than the other way.

On Saturday, those preferences will determine the three critical seats on the cross-benches. At present the polls show that that contest for the last seat in each electorate is between the Michael Moore Independents, the Greens, the Democrats and Independent Paul Osborne. None is rating a full quota in any electorate at present, so it is is likely is that preferences from Labor and the Liberals will determine which of these minors and independents gets the last seat in each electorate. In the Assembly, the cross bench is vital for the shape of legislation, the make-up of committees, the answerability of Ministers and the bureaucracy and so on. In those circumstances, the calibre and attitudes of the people is of great importance.
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Insofar as Kate Carnell was preaching to the converted at a lunch of property owners yesterday she could have taken as her text, from John Donne’s Devotions: “”No man is an island”. Donne’s language, written four centuries ago, would need to be cleansed of sexism, but the sentiment was right. Ms Carnell argued that the ACT was surrounded by NSW and therefore could not be, in Donne’s words, “”entire of itself”. In short, we must compete with NSW by offering lower taxes so businesses would flock here. Rosemary Follett, at the same lunch, also took up the theme. She had lowered the tax on low-alcohol beer in line with NSW _ in case people flocked to Queanbeyan to get their grog as they did in the early days of Canberra when the Federal territory was ruled by the teetotal King O’Malley. She had also cut payroll tax in line with NSW down to 7 per cent. Mrs Carnell promised to cut it further _ down to 6 per cent, to lure more businesses here. She repeated various other promises of subsidies and lower taxes to make the ACT more attractive and competitive with other states. Evidence of the success of such a policy was manifest.

Here was a Building Owners’ and Managers’ Association lunch in a room in the Canberra Club (which incidentally just a few years ago would have barred yesterday’s two honoured guests on the ground they were not men) filled to capacity with business people _ no doubt attracted by the subsidy provided by Jones Lang Wootton, the sponsor. As the lunch progressed it transpired that there were two ACTs _ utterly different territories. One was stable, growing well, doing innovative things, consulting with business and generating business. And it had the statistics to go with it: debt reduced from $1000 a head to $180 and a Standard and Poors triple A credit rating.
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Liberal Party pre-selection nomination closes at 5pm today (Wednesday). Candidates will attend the usual presentation and questions at a Canberra branch meeting on Thursday night before the pre-selection ballot on Saturday. There are likely to be up to 10 candidates. Among them are the former Member for Canberra (1975-1980) now businessman and restaurateur, John Haslem; a former director of the ACT Liberals and Assembly candidate, Gwen Wilcox; and former Peacock staffer and Foreign-Affairs officer Jane Drake-Brockman. Some interstate interest has been expressed in the seat. Nominees have to be supported by 10 members of the party who are eligible to vote in the pre-selection. Members of the Canberra branch who have attended a meeting in the past six months are eligible to vote.

The ACT Liberal Party wants to give residents a greater say on development in their suburbs at the same making the development-application process more streamlined, under its planning policy launched at the site of the proposed Gungahlin Town Centre yesterday. Opposition planning spokesman Greg Cornwell said, “”We want a city with a bush environment that is well-serviced but one that we can afford to live in and maintain.”

He said the Liberals would begin the centre before the end of the year, as promised to residents, and would not allow the legless lizard to hold it up. The lizard would be relocated if the town centre could not be built around its habitat. The centre would be strata titled to allow individual businesses to own shops. The key points of the policy are: Local area planning advisory committees of local residents affected by redevelopment proposals. This was recommended by the Landsdown inquiry and the Government has promised a similar approach. A review of the Planning Appeals Board and the separation of the ACT Planning Authority from the Department of Land, Environment and Planning.
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Tomorrow (SATY) the people of the ACT will be asked to vote in a referendum on the electoral system. The referendum will ask whether voters want to entrench the Hare-Clark system. This is a very different question from whether one approves or disapproves of Hare-Clark or any other system. All entrenchment does is say: “”Before you change this system or bring in a totally new system you have to have a two-thirds majority of the Assembly or a referendum”.

Entrenchment takes the major questions of the electoral system out of the hands of the politicians who might have a bare majority in the Assembly at any given time and insists that either the people approve any new system or that a broad consensus (two-thirds majority) of Members of the Assembly approve it. In short, neither the Labor nor Liberal party can get a bare majority in the Assembly and change the system to suit itself. We have seen an attempt at that which nearly succeeded. In 1992 an advisory referendum voted 65 per cent in favour of the Hare-Clark system with no party voting.
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