Crispin Hull

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.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_lunch”

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.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_libplan”

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.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_leader17feb”

Independent MLA Michael Moore has been attacked by both the Labor Party and the monopoly taxi provider in Canberra over his policy to deregulate the taxi industry. The aim of his policy is sound; they way he proposed it should be implemented needs further thought. The ACT has 202 taxis and the price of a plate is $241,000. In total, it is $48 million “”worth” of taxi plates. That “”worth”, however, is not value in the sense that a tangible resource is valuable. The value of taxi plates is a purely artificial creation of Government.

The Government limits the number of taxis on the road by law and therefore the value of having a part of this artificial monopoly is extremely high _ $241,000 to be precise. This cost, of course, is passed on tot he consumer in the form of higher taxi fares. True, the fares are regulated but when fares are set the cost of the plate is taken into account. In effect, the $241,000 is a government revenue-raising exercise and one that results in higher fares and fewer taxis on the road for the convenience of Canberrans.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_leader03feb”

Reading the tea leaves of the Fraser by-election. By CRISPIN HULL Some time in the past few weeks, the Member for Fraser, John Langmore, licked the tip of his forefinger held it up and turned it slowly around to guage the direction of the political wind.

Yesterday he announced that he would renominate for Fraser, abandoning an earlier expressed preference to move to Canberra _ the new central seat to be created at the next redistribution.

Mr Langmore’s announcement appears to be based more upon the flow-on from the resignation of Ros Kelly from the existing Tuggeranong-and-Woden based seat of Canberra than the poor showing of Labor in Saturday’s ACT Legislative Assembly election. Under existing boundaries, the ACT has two federal seats: Fraser in the north and Canberra in the south. These boundaries will apply at the March 25 by-election. However, there has been a redistribution to apply from the next general election under which the ACT gets three seats: Fraser in the north, Canberra in the centre and Namadgi in the south. In effect, the new name “”Namadgi” would be applied to the old Canberra seat and the new seat created in the centre from bits of the old two electorates would get the name “”Canberra” _ the seat Mr Langmore had earlier expressed a preference for.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_langmore”

The ACT should have a separate “”land account” so that the public could see what politicians were doing with the ACT’s $8 billion worth of public land, according to the Moore Independents. Moore Independent candidate Mark Dunstone condemned the Liberal Party’s policy of giving automatic renewals for business leases as pork-barrelling and giving community assets to favoured businesses “”at a time when we can’t even afford to properly fund our schools and hospitals”. He wanted an open account as recommended by several inquiries into Act land tenure. Present government-private joint ventures were only earning half the return that public land development should. “”It’s time the ACT public was given the information to judge what ACT Governments are up to,” he said. He called on Labor to state its commitment to the ACT leasehold system and indicate its support for 100 betterment tax when people changes lease purposes.

The ALP is comfortably ahead in the Federal seat of Canberra which faces a by-election on March 25 to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Ros Kelly. However, there is still a large undecided vote and the poll indicates that Labor is slightly behind its vote at the 1993 election. Surprisingly, the Green vote is lower federally than it is locally. The poll had Labor on 38; Liberal 29 and undecided at 26. After splitting the undecided, Labor would have a result not dissimilar from 1993: a reasonably comfortable win after the distribution of preferences.

Political analyst Malcolm Mackerras has argued that a by-election caused in these circumstances would cause a large swing away from the sitting party. That does not appear to have happened, though there are too many undecided to draw a firm conclusion. The poll was taken before candidates have been formally pre-selected, though the Liberals’ John Haslem, who held the seat from 1975 to 1980 had declared his candidacy. The poll was taken at the same time and with the same respondents (where geographically appropriate) as the poll on the February 18 ACT election. The result showed Federal matters were much clearer for voters and voters were more polarised than in the local election. The undecided vote was 10 percentage points lower and the vote for minors and independents combined was seven percentage points lower. And the same respondents in the seat of Canberra were used for both polls.
Continue reading “1995_02_february_kelly”

The Merit Protection Review Agency inquiry into harassment at the Australian War Memorial was ordered by the Minister for Public Service Matter, Gary Johns, without the input or possibly the knowledge of the portfolio Minister, Con Sciacca, according to documents obtained by The Canberra Times.

Mr Johns’s office acknowledged yesterday that Mr Sciacca had no input into the terms of reference, but said he had been informed of it.

Information received by The Canberra Times shows also that the Ministers were sent during the inquiry’s life Federal Attorney-General’s Department and other legal advice that the inquiry was flawed, but no action was taken on the advice. Since the inquiry into alleged workplace harassment was launched (it was never formally announced to the public) in August last year, up to eight staff have been off on stress leave at any one time, key and talented staff have sought jobs elsewhere. A Federal Court challenge to the MPRA’s unpublished findings is now under way by the former director Brendon Kelson and the present deputy director Dr Michael McKernan. Documents obtained by The Canberra Times reveal that the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs, Con Sciacca, had been provided with legal advice from the Attorney-General’s Department that the procedure and jurisdiction of the MPRA was defective and he had been urged to ask Mr Johns to stop the inquiry. Other sources say other legal advice to similar effect had been sent to Mr John’s office. Mr Johns’s office said yesterday that no legal advice impugning the jurisdiction or procedural correctness of the inquiry had been received. Mr Johns’s office said Sciacca had been aware of the inquiry, but had had no input into its terms of reference. Other material shows that the Public Service Commissioner, Dennis Ives, had expressed concern and doubt about the MPRA’s definition of workplace harassment as being too wide and beyond the defined public-service offence. However, the MPRA says it undertook its inquiry fairly, within jurisdiction, using the proper definition of workplace harassment. That is not the view of Mr Kelson and Dr McKernan. They assert the MPRA acted outside its jurisdiction, did not adopt procedural fairness, engaged in trawling for allegations and encouraged allegations to be brought, that it put allegations in a generalised way and did not confine itself to the definition of harassment in the public-service guidelines, among other things.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_warnews”

The Australian War Memorial has gone through a period of major disruption over the four-month inquiry by the Merit Protection and Review Agency in what is seen by some as a dangerous precedent in the Australian Public Service. It has also revealed one Federal Minister being taken totally by surprise by the actions of another that affected in his portfolio area _ similar in nature if not seriousness as the woodchip fiasco.

Information received by The Canberra Times shows also that the Ministers were sent quite early in the inquiry’s life Federal Attorney-General’s Department advice that the inquiry was flawed, but no action was taken on the advice. Since the inquiry into alleged workplace harassment was launched (it was never formally announced to the public) in August last year, up to eight staff have been off on stress leave at any one time, key and talented staff have sought jobs elsewhere and staff have been frequently distracted by gossip, hearings and generally taken up with inquiry matters rather than memorial work. A Federal Court challenge to the MPRA’s unpublished findings is now under way by the former director Brendon Kelson and the present deputy director Dr Michael McKernan. Documents obtained by The Canberra Times reveal that the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs, Con Sciacca, had been provided with legal advice from officers of the Attorney-General’s Department expressing the opinion that the procedure and jurisdiction of the MPRA was defective and he had been urged to ask the Minister responsible for Public Service Matter, Gary Johns, to stop the inquiry. Other sources say other legal advice to similar effect had been sent to John’s office. Johns’s office said yesterday that no legal advice impugning the jurisdiction or procedural correctness of the inquiry had been received.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_warmem”