Crispin Hull

An ACT referendum will be required on a issue if supported by 10,000 signatures under a proposal detailed by the Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, yesterday.

She said the Community Referendum Bill would be introduced into the Legislative Assembly next month. The trigger number of signatures would be 5 per cent of electors, or about 10,000, collected in six months.

Her announcement came before a federal conference on citizens’ initiated referendums (or direct democracy) on Thursday. That conference will be addressed by Liberal Peter Reith, Democrat Leader Cheryl Kernot, Independent Ted Mack, authors Bryce Courtenay, Tom Kenneally and Morris West, and Ms Carnell.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_cir26”

Apologies to Keats for mashing his beautiful sonnet “”On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” penned in the early years of last century. And apologies to Chapman, for likening him to a CD-ROM player, but just a Keats marvelled at his new view of Greece after being introduced to Homer after Chapman did the translation, I am marvelling at the power of CD-ROM to do things with law and encyclopedias.

And like Keats, I am a late-comer. Most of his companions learnt Greek and did not wait for Chapman. CD-ROMS have been around awhile, especially in the workplace, but to have one in the computer at home, with some useful CDs is different.

So many CDs for computers are rubbish _ vast computing power wasted on games and sound effects. However, an encyclopedia or the volumes of Commonwealth law that take up eight metres of shelves on CD is another matter.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_cdrom”

How cute. The cat replaces the mouse. Above is the ACECAT II (pen and electronic tablet) which can be used as a computer pen for drawing, drafting and for doing all the usual thing the mouse does.

ACECAT II uses precise positioning. The tablet and the screen correlate. Where you point on the tablet is exactly where your cursor appears on the screen. When you hold the pen down the nib clicks, in an equivalent to the left mouse button (the right button is on the handle of the pen).

The ACECAT II costs $199 at Dick Smith Electronics.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_cat”

All infant milk formulas should carry health warnings bigger than those on cigarette packets because the risks were comparable, a professor of reproductive biology said yesterday.

Professor Roger Short told a conference at Woden Valley Hospital that manufacturers who did not warn mothers of the health risks of infant milk formulas as a substitute for breast milk could be successfully sued.

Professor Roger Short said the scientific evidence was so compelling a mother “”would surely win her case”.

“”It seems a tragedy that modern civilisation, and the medical profession, has thrown breastmilk out with the baby’s bath water,” he said.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_breast”

Dieter Fink and Ken Stevens (sitting) of the ANU’s Department of Commerce, who have been awarded a research grant by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia to look at unsatisfactory features in financial management software and their resulting bad practices. With them (both standing) are ICAA executive director Stephen Harrison and president Peter Jollie.

The award of $4000 will help the researchers look at the most common financial and management accounting software used in Australia to be followed by a survey of major accounting firms.

The new hand-held Telxon hand-held wireless pen computer, that can send information back to a host computer by modem, cellular radio or wide-area network.
Continue reading “1994_07_july_blines”

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”