Crispin Hull

Tasmanian Government is playing an artful numbers game.

Given that our own little polity is to have an almost identical voting system to Tasmania, the game is instructive.

The present Tasmanian Lower House was elected by the Hare-Clark system. There are seven Members of Parliament for each of five electorates. The five State electorates are identical to the five Federal electorates _ drawn independently and fairly by the Australian Electoral Commission.

Under the present system of seven MPs in each seat, it requires 12.5 per cent of the vote plus one for a candidate to be assured of winning a seat _ that is one eighth of the vote plus one vote. In practice, it can mean less than this, especially in the scramble for the last seat when the vote is split among the lower-end candidates and preferences are being allocated.
Continue reading “1993_11_november_column22”

Had a drawing teacher called Betty Edwards. I never met Ms Edwards, other than through a book, but she was a pretty classy teacher. Not that I was much of a student, but at least she took me from stick figures to something that was at least recognisably human.

Ms Edwards made a bizarre but very intelligent observation. She said too many sketchers attempt to draw things. This, she opined, was completely the wrong way to go about it. It was better, she said, to draw the spaces around and between the things rather than the things themselves. The paces between, of course, are odd, so the brain sees them as pure shape, allowing the hand to draw them as pure shape. Whereas if you try to draw the thing itself, your brain does a lot of unnecessary overtime and says, “”I know what that is. It is a man. And a man has two long arms, two long legs a round head and an oblong body.” And so you end up with an unrealistic stick figure. In reality, one of the man’s arms might be shorter than his hand because it is stretched out towards the viewer with the hand in a stop gesture.

Ms Edwards came to mind the other day in a little town down at the coast. I was looking at some new houses and some others under construction. It had nothing to do with drawing, but I was thinking about Ms Edwards’s view about the spaces between things.
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Law in Australia is like a mirage in the desert. A caravan of legislative drafters and government copyright lawyers arrive at the oasis of sunshine a light only to find that the water has moved again to the distant horizon.

Last week’s case which revealed a loophole enabling the bootlegging of live-to-air performances of major pop stars was but a small sample of a quarter of a century of legislation being unable to catch up with technology. Moreover, when its belated attempts finally hit the statute book, the result has invariably been a miasma of detail through which lawyers can wade to find unintended loopholes. And thus a small Adelaide company is able to produce CDs of live performances of overseas stars without paying royalties or a fair return to the artists.

This loophole can probably be closed quite quickly, especially as major recording studios (with their legal and financial clout) are involved. However, a more serious piece of oasis movement is about to happen.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column04oxt”

And lawyers both earn a living searching for the truth, but they do it in different ways.

Lawyers do it in a rigidly controlled environment of rules, regulations and conventions. They have special privileges bestowed upon them by society. They are granted a special monopoly by law and the courts enable them to collect their fees more easily because they become part of the judgment debt.

Moreover, the lawyer-client relationship is granted special status by law. The courts will not prise open the confidentiality of that relationship. Further, a lawyer’s utterances in court (no matter how untrue or malicious) are protected from defamation actions.

In return, however, lawyers are subjected to rules of professional discipline both immediately in court and more generally by the professional body.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column11oct”

Use of Sir Humphrey’s Fourth Argument Against Changing Anything at All (it will cost too much) was inevitable.

Thus the opponents of citizens’ initiative condemned the idea when it was floated last week. It would cost $1 million per referendum, they said.

However, it is just as easy to see citizens’ initiative as an investment through which citizens will stop governments doing foolish and expensive things.

There are several kinds. All require a certain percentage of voters’ signatures which force a binding referendum on the legislature. Some are limited to vetoing existing laws. Others allow referendums to propose laws, provided they do not require more than a certain level of spending or are limited to major constitutional matters. And others allow open slather.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column18oct”

Was good at sewing. She did repairs and made clothes on a Singer.

Stefan played the mouth-organ and spoke five languages. On good days, well directed, he could clip a hedge. Henry was better. He was a man of fewer words, but he had a sense about gardening and usually didn’t need direction.

George sat at the bus shelter and did the Melbourne Herald crossword. It was one of those crosswords where each clue gave three obvious answers, making half a million combinations. The prize kept jackpotting. It hit 3000 pounds once, which was a lot of money in 1965. George posted his entry every day at Beechworth Post Office before going back Up Top.
Continue reading “1993_10_october_column25oct”

First the firemen came. They arrived in their big yellow truck armed with tape measures.

They measured the inside floor area of Tilley’s Devine Cafe Gallery in Lyneham. They measured the bar, the stage and the fixed seating, and left.

Then came the officious letter.

“”Your premises has recently been assessed by the Safety Officers from the ACT Fire Brigade and in accordance with provisions of Section 24B of the Liquor Act 1975 I have determined the occupancy loadings for each relevant public area in conformity with that assessment. The loadings are detailed below: Area A. Bar and Bistro 136 persons. Area B Outdoor Cafe 231 persons.
Continue reading “1993_09_september_tilleys”

ACT planners were about to denigrate a significant national cultural site, according to the Canberra Conservation Council.

The council pleaded yesterday for the preservation and restoration of the Tuggeranong Homestead and surrounds where Charles Bean wrote the Gallipoli volumes of the Australian official history of World War I. The council opposed the development of housing near the homestead and opposed the conversion of the permitted land use on the homestead and surrounds to commercial which would permit a Federation Square-type development.

“”This is the spot where Bean’s two volumes on Gallipoli _ an episode which has a unique position in Australian history _ was penned,” the president of the council, Jacqui Rees, said. “”It is incongruous in the extreme that such a place is to be draped with vistas of intruding paling fences and drying washing.”
Continue reading “1993_09_september_tuggers”

Top ALP officials were advised to offer help to companies when they sought funds before election campaigns, according to documents obtained by üThe Canberra Times@ yesterday.

The documents also show how lobbyists successfully watered down anti-tobacco health proposals using tactics that “”would make interesting reading in book form”.

The documents, mainly in the form of card indexes, show details of ALP approaches to major companies before the 1980, 1983 and 1987 elections. The indexes were kept by lobbyist and ALP fund-raiser Charles Wright.

Mr Wright was appointed chair of the ACT Tourism Advisory Board earlier this year. The appointment was attacked by the Opposition in the ACT Legislative Assembly last week. Liberal MLAs cited his directorship of a company that went into receivership owing group tax and the Government and his mention in the WA Inc Royal Commission as being a conduit for former Premier Brian Burke to pay Mr Burke’s former secretary Brenda Brush $80,000.
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He chair of the ACT Tourism Board, Charles Wright, led a charmed life or had a guardian angel with respect to his taxation affairs, Liberal Senator Bronwyn Bishop said at a Senate Estimates Committee meeting yesterday.

The Minister for Administrative Services, Senator Bob McMullan, accused Senator Bishop of a scandalous misuse of parliamentary privilege to sully Mr Wright’s reputation.

Also yesterday, the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, stood by her appointment of Mr Wright as chair of the Tourism Advisory Board while the Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, called for him to stand aside pending an inquiry.
Continue reading “1993_09_september_wright3”