Crispin Hull

The Minister for Urban Services, David Lamont, said yesterday that letter from the accountants of the La Grange in Franklin Street had put the lie to Opposition statements that red tape had prevented the closure of Franklin Street for New Year’s Eve. Mr Lamont said the letter from Bates and Pickering endorsed the Government’s position that the street only be closed with the agreement of traders themselves _ something which the owners of La Grange and Opposition Leader Kate Carnell had failed to secure. He issued a copy of the undated letter seeking withdrawal of the request for temporary closure because of inability to get the public-liability insurance of $10 million per incident required by the department; failure by traders to give firm undertakings to meet the costs of closure leaving the Grange to be saddled with the costs; some traders reversing their position and being openly hostile to the closure; the requirement by the department made on December 21 for portable toilets to be installed. Mr Lamont said the letter had noted that departmental officers had been helpful. Mrs Carnell said that in fact the letter supported her position that the traders had been happy to have the street temporarily closed on New Year’s Eve if it could be done cheaply and easily by putting up some barricades, getting some security staff and cleaning up any mess. Once the department had started insisting on costly and unrealistic public-liability insurance and for portable toilets of course some of the traders changed their minds. Red tape had prevented the orderly closure of the street around 6pm. The proof of her position was that the police had had to close the street before midnight for public-safety reasons in any event. They had done so without public-liability insurance and without portable toilets, and had done it in the face of likely political flak because they knew the Government was opposed to a closure. The traders had only wanted closure for public safety and to generate a fun atmosphere without cars; they had not wanted to increase their licence areas.

Attorney-General Terry Connolly has acknowledged several ACT agencies have not responded within Freedom of Information Act deadlines to requests for access to documents about the Vitab affair. The requests were made by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Tony De Domenico, who said the $3.5 million payout by the ACT was a significant amount and more details should be made public. Mr Connolly said that under the Act the failure to met the deadline would be deemed to be a refusal for access. He thought that much of the request would have been refused in any event because the information was commercial-in-confidence. The delay had been caused by collating three FOI requests into one. Mr De Domenico could appeal the deemed refusal. Mr Connolly said he thought it inconsistent for the Liberals to be talking about openness in the light or recent events. Mr De Domenico said the ratepayers of the ACT had the right to know how their $3.5 million had been spent. Unless the Government released the information “”you could presume they have something to hide”.

Ending the use of drinking water to water Parliament’s lawns, an ACT population and growth study, native fauna corridors, a charge on plastic bags at shops and a ban on battery hens are among a comprehensive log of claims for the next Assembly made public yesterday by the Canberra Conservation Council. The Public Service should end provision of cars and parking fees as part of pay packages, the log said. The log ranged across 11 policy areas including nature conservation, air and water, planning, transport, waste and animal welfare.

The president of the council, Jacqui Rees, called also for the replacement of “”the undesirable system of patronage through ministerial appointment to government bodies” with a system of public nomination and vetting of appointments. On water, the council wanted lake water, grey water and storm water to be used for public place park watering, especially in the Triangle. It called for schemes to encourage reuse of waste water at private dwellings. It said the ACT should seek full membership on the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. On air, it sought air testing for benzene and other compounds in unleaded fuel; enforcement of penalties on excess pollution from fuel-burning heaters and stoves; encouragement of firewood plantations; mandatory public disclosure of excess pollution levels. “”Growth” should be replaced by sustainability as the imperative for planning and as a goal for industry.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_environ”

The result of the ACT election will not be known until at least a week after the vote _ due to the nature of ACT electoral law and the nature of the electorate.The result in the final seat in each electorate is expected to be known on the night of Saturday, February 25, or on March 3 by the latest.

On election night _ February 18 _ the ACT Electoral Commission will count only first-preferences. But more than 95 per cent of them will be counted on the night, unlike Federal elections where only 85 per cent are counted.

This is because the bulk of out-of-area voting in the ACT will be recorded as ordinary votes. People can cast an ordinary vote at a polling booth in any of the three electorates, irrespective of which electorate they are enrolled in. In Federal elections, these are out of area votes and because of verification procedures cannot be counted on the night.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_count”

The count is done on a exhaustive quota preferential system. Individual candidates with quotas on the first count are elected. In Molonglo the quota is 12.5 per cent of the vote and it is 16.6 per cent in the other two seats. Any over quota surplus for elected candidates is distributed according to preferences. This is done by distributing all the elected candidates’ ballot papers, but they will be transferred at a reduced value to account for the percentage of them used to elect the candidate. If that distribution gives any candidates a quota they are elected and again surpluses are transferred. If after all the surpluses have been distributed, vacancies remain, the candidate with the lowest vote is excluded and his or her ballot papers are distributed according to preferences. It is likely that the last one or two seats in each electorate will be decided on preferences and the others will be decided by distributed surpluses among the major-party candidates. The suburbs in the three electorates are as follows:

Ginninderra: Aranda, Belconnen, Bruce, Charnwood, Cook, Dunlop, Evatt, Florey, Flynn, Fraser, Giralang, Hall, Hawker, Higgins, Holt, Kaleen, Latham, Lawson, MacGregor, Macquarie, McKellar, Melba, Page, Scullin, Spence, Weetangera.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_count1”

Please ensure last sentence stays in to correct the misimpression. A semantic correction is not enough! The log of conservation claims for Assembly candidates published yesterday was made by the Canberra Conservation Council, not the Greens as stated in the headline. The text was correct. This was a sub-editor’s error. The council does not stand candidates and has a different view on issues such as urban renewal and light rail than the Greens who are standing candidates.

The ACT Opposition promised yesterday to renew all commercial and residential leases free of charge. Opposition Leader Kate Carnell said that, if elected next month, the Liberals would overturn the ACT Government’s decision to charge 10 per cent of unimproved value to renew commercial leases.

Last week the Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Bill Wood, announced the renewal policy for 99-year and 50-year commercial leases. He said they could be renewed any time in their last 30 years for a payment of 10 per cent of value, provided the land was not needed for public purposes.

Residential 99-year leases can be renewed upon payment of an administrative fee. Mr Wood said that as commercial leases were for profit it was appropriate to charge a renewal fee and it was necessary to preserve Canberra’s leasehold system.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_comlease”

Ministers of the Crown probably have the direct least training for their than any occupation in the nation. The wonder is not that you get an occasional Collins, Bedall or Kelly, but that there are not more of them.

The most stark illustration of lack of theoretical knowledge of the job of Minister came when Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was asked during the Fitzgerald inquiry what he understood by the doctrine of separation of powers. He had been a frontbencher for two decades yet did not have a clue. As Premier with a rubber-stamp Parliament he had no need for such a doctrine. He imagined that as the practical power to create or change legislation was his, too, Ministers did not have to bother much about what it said. In theory, the courts interpreted and applied legislation in particular cases and could question executive action made under it. And so the separation of the powers helps prevent tyranny and abuse of power. When, however, one party led by one person gets a majority in a single-house parliament for a long time, the legislative and executive functions and powers tend to fuse. And sometime later parts of the judiciary fall, too. In the future, I suspect we are going to see the doctrine of the separation of powers less easily pushed aside, for several reasons: the composition of parliaments; greater intrusion of federal power; and more active pressure groups. Australia is seeing more minority governments and Upper Houses not controlled by the governing party. It means more legislation has to go through by compromise and watchful non-government MPs do not like legislation that gives Ministers too much power. Legislation tends to have far fewer words like “”The Minister may do X, Y or Z” and more words like “”The Minister (ital) shall (end ital) do X, Y and Z”. Greater federal intrusion comes when the Federal Government wants to make political forays in fields not specified in the Constitution as federal powers. Human rights and the environment are prime examples. It does it is two main ways.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_column30jan”

I know the name of the person against whom a sexual harassment charge was made that resulted last week in the ACT Liberal Party getting an injunction against media organisations to prevent the publication of the name or of any details of the case. I also know the name of the person who made the allegations. So, too, do at least 10 of my media colleagues, nearly all members of the House of Assembly and their staffers and several lawyers in town. And I have little doubt that many of them have told many of their professional colleagues. The reason we know and you don’t is because journalists, politicians and lawyers _ through their training and life experience _ are more responsible, non-judgmental and fair than people in the community at large. Why should the public have the same information? Bus drivers, electricians, welders, accountants and dentists, for example, are less well-educated or have narrower educations, and clearly could not be trusted with the same range of information that journalists, politicians and lawyers have access to. The electricians and dentists are far more likely to jump to prejudicial conclusions than the rightly privileged select few journalists, politicians and lawyers who are in the know.

It is important therefore that strong measures are in force to stop the information from getting into the wrong hands, or wrong heads. It is important that the information should be denied the mass of the ill-educated, narrow, ignorant and stupid people who make up the occupations bus driver, electrician, social-welfare recipient or house carer, for example. Notice that Liberal and Labor MLAs are at one on this; so it must be right. If anything, its seems the $5000 maximum fine under the ACT Discrimination Act for imparting the dangerous information is too light. It is only at a similar rate as the far less dangerous crimes of negligent driving and speeding. I suppose the basic problem with giving this information to the masses is that they are incapable of drawing a distinction between mere allegations and proof.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_column24jan”

I was having a wine over the New Year break with a Sydney friend who berated me for the failings of Australia’s media. In particular, he wanted to know why hadn’t anyone written the story about where the Australian economy would be if Hewson had won the 1993 election. He said we were facing taxes and interest rates far worse than the GST.

“”You’re from Canberra you must have the inside knowledge. What will the government do?” he asked. I told him he was inconsistent in blaming the media for not running the full story, but seeking some inside knowledge from someone in the Canberra media as if that was a fountain of wisdom. None the less, he should not rely on the predictions of Canberra-based journalists, nor rely on the predictions of market economists _ you know those guys who said the All Ordinaries would hit 2500 last year. As this was not very helpful, I also suggested the following rule of thumb: Governments say they are in the business of smoothing out the economic boom-bust cycle. It is in their interest, therefore, to predict things will be smoother than they are likely to be. They want to look good. It is also true that governments invariably are not as good as they would like to make themselves out to be. Therefore you could safely add one or two percentage points to any prediction made by government. This is for both boom and bust statistics. So coming out of the cycle, as we are now, you could add a couple of percent to Budget forecasts for growth, business investments, inflation and interest rates. “”But what about tax rises?” he asked. They are baying for them in Canberra, I told him. And they may have to happen because _ short of a Maciavellian rope trick _ because the government has given itself no out. My friend glumly took another sip of his wine: “Why?” he asked. “”Because of that,” I said, pointing to the wine. “”I don’t follow.” I explained that tax changes people’s conduct.
Continue reading “1995_01_january_column17jan”