Crispin Hull

Residents of Lanyon Park in Banks expressed their anger yesterday at the spread of dual-occupancy dwellings in their suburb.

They say that in-fill and dual occupancy is wrong in a suburb 30 kilometres from the centre of town and with few facilities of its own.

Ros Thomas, of West Place, said she had bought a block in the suburb thinking it would a traditional single-residence area and she now found second houses being built in the yards of many nearby houses, degrading the area.

Dual occupancies were being built on virtually every corner block on Smeaton Circuit and on many other blocks and some were being sold off the plan by real-estate agents before approvals were granted, she said.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_banks”

ACT Labor Senator Bob McMullan called yesterday for the new ACT third Federal seat to be set aside for a woman candidate.

He suggested that the ALP national executive designate the seat for a woman, given that the ACT branch did not have the power under its rules to do so.

Senator McMullan said he was not getting into the quota argument, but said this was a vacant seat, so no sitting member would be disadvantaged and it was a safe seat, so there was no question of putting a marginal seat at risk. It would be recognising an historic anomaly and taking active steps to overcome it.
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The ACT might be the mouse that roared in the Great Australian Centenary Constitutional Debate _ but it will only be by accidental political circumstance.

During the week we saw the stock headline New Coalition Split Looms in the same way that New Labor Split Looms was used as a stock headline in the 1960s.

This week it was citizens’ initiated referendums. National Party leader Tim Fischer and Liberal leader Alexander Downer are against them and said so bluntly in public. Liberal defence spokesman Peter Reith is in favour and has been saying so for six years. Former Queensland National Party Leader, Russell Cooper, is also in favour and so is ACT Liberal Opposition Leader, Kate Carnell.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_actpol31”

One of the arguments against fixed-term parliaments is that with the election date known so far in advance, politicians would be electioneering for longer periods of time than with the system of the Prime Minister determining the election date and the length of the official campaign.

The two year extravaganza leading up to the first Tuesday in November for the US presidential election is cited as evidence of this.

It is a poor example for Australia. Events in the ACT are proving this argument against fixed terms to be nonsense.

Americans go through a primary (or pre-selection) process which involves a large number of ordinary voters. Here pre-selections are done in back rooms that used to be smoke-filled.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_actpol23”

Yowani Golf Club plans to build a 230-dwelling housing estate on its lease, drawing fire from Independent MLA Michael Moore who said the community stood to loose up to $10 million from a misuse of the lease system.

“”If the club does not want land for golf, the purpose for which it was given a very cheap lease, then it should hand it back,” he said.

The general president of Yowani, Pat Griffin, said the club had selected a preferred developer. The development would be done with Yowani having a major say in design so it is integrated with the course.

Members would have first option on the dwellings.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_yowani”

ACT Electricity and Water called on Canberrans yesterday to voluntarily conserve water, saying that at present consumption rates compulsory restrictions would apply on Thursday.

Those restrictions would ban outside use of water on pain of a maximum $5000 fine for individuals or $25,000 for corporations.

They would be the first water restrictions in Canberra for more than 20 years.

The water shortage is being caused by bans by ACTEW engineers on the treating of water in protest at the ACT Government’s move to bring ACTEW under its Public Sector Management Bill.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_water”

ACT Government has moved to replace the board of the ACT TAB, according to racing and other sources.

A special Cabinet meeting has been called for this morning to appoint chartered accountant Bruce Glanville as chairman and two other members, solicitor Elizabeth Bradley and the head of the Department of Sport Mark Owens, who is a former secretary of the ACT Racing Club.

The reports could not be confirmed officially last night and none of the new board members could be contacted directly last night.

The fate of the chief executive, Phillip Neck, is in the hands of the new board. It is expected though that the board will recommend to the Minister for Sport, David Lamont, that he be replaced.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_vitab10”

The ACT Government is the most ideologically left-wing government in the western world, according to the Leader of the Opposition, Alexander Downer.

No matter which party was in power, the days of the Federal Government being the source of wealth and growth for the ACT were over, he said on a visit to the CT Legislative Assembly yesterday.

The ACT had to put out the welcoming mat to business if it was to prosper.

He said, however, that there would be no public service bashing by him and that he had a great deal of respect for public servants.
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Two independents and the Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, issued yesterday a joint statement calling for the immediate release of the report by Professor Dennis Pearce into the Vitab affair.

“”We are concenred that you have permitted your staff or senior bureaucrats to selectively leak information to the media about Professor Pearce’s findings,” they said.

The inquiry was publicly funded and the people of Canberra are entitled to its early release.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_vitab07”

At the heart of the VITAB affair is a question. Was this proposal a genuine foray into the Asian betting market by ACTTAB after receiving a proposal from a company that had secured a betting licence in Vanuatu? Or was the VITAB proposal totally underwritten by a couple of Australian syndicates of big smart punters sick of having to beat the 15 per cent government take before it can make a profit? Why not go off-shore where the government take and overhead costs are lower and the returns higher?

Pearce shows ACTTAB was naive, too enthusiastic and starry-eyed at the presence of the Great Punter Bob Hawke. He shows, too, that the VITAB directors were smart in insisting on a confidentiality agreement which would cut off some of its and the department’s avenues of inquiry.

But why did they fall for it? Because they were bureaucratic babes in a commercial wood. Why did VITAB go for it? Because the prize was big: access to wealth generated by government monopoly and prohibition that would not otherwise be there.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_compearc”