Crispin Hull

The Minister for Environment, Land and Planning is happy to attend a public meeting about development in North Duffy-Holder, he said yesterday.

He was responding to a North-Duffy-Holder Residents Action Group letter which said no-one from the ACT Government had attended several public meetings on the issue in the past, unlike Liberal, Independent and Abolish Self-Government representatives.
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I imagined a typical public meeting on matters of legal reform. Twenty or so earnest, well-informed people with a commitment to community matters would be dwarfed by a large lecture theatre hired by the impossibly optimistic organisers.

And thus I prepared a brief talk on Crown reserve powers in the ACT and how they might apply nationally _ fairly esoteric but suitably informative stuff for my imagined audience.

Little did I know. The Nicholls Theatre at the National Convention Centre was packed to overflowing.
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NOT MUCH can be usefully added to the abortion debate. The stir over the funding of a clinic in Canberra is a case in point. Several times in the past 20 years an abortion clinic has been proposed. Each time the letter writers and commentators on each side round up the usual arguments.

Politicians generally hate the abortion debate. Politically, it is like the gun issue. People are prepared to change their vote on that issue alone. Take away my gun and you lose my vote. Legalise/prohibit abortion you lose my vote.

Last week, Professor Geoffrey Walker, of Queensland University, suggested a way to take such issues “”out of the hands of extremists”. He repeated his call for citizens’ veto and citizens’ initiative.
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AFTER spending a week on a tropical island in the Torres Strait, you see some very primitive cultural habits. Some of them are really dumb and very costly.

It’s no good saying you have to respect culture no matter what. These things have to be questioned.

I’m not talking about the cultural habits I saw on the island, of course. No; I refer to the ones I saw among white fellas with a fresh eye on my return.
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IT WAS an unusual conveyance. Usually conveyances of land are done in land-titles offices by lawyers and their clerks dressed in business clothes. Usually conveyances require long-winded documents expressed in legalese in an attempt to prevent subsequent disputes. The land is described with great precision. The rights of those involved are defined clearly. Not on Friday. I witnessed what could loosely be described as a conveyance on Murray Island in the Torres Strait.

Murray Island, you will recall, was the island that was subject to the now-famous Mabo case in the High Court. Their Honours would be pleased to know that Mabo Case T-shirts are regularly worn by Islanders. The Islanders would prefer the case to be known, however, as the Murray Island case, or the Mer case, Mer being the traditional name. Eddie Mabo, you see, lived much of his life on the mainland. He was, however, a political stirrer and propelled the case.

Only 400 of perhaps 3000 Murray Islander people inhabit the island. Many of the others come back from time to time, some to live, especially after their children have grown up and been educated in Cairns or Townsville. And Thus it was that a Murray Islander with the improbably name of called Elsie Smith came back to Murray Island earlier this year with her son, Carl, to ask for possession of her family lands on the island.
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THE centenary celebrations of the Corowa constitutional convention recently a couple of speakers bemoaned that Australia did not get a Bill of Rights in its early nationhood, like the US.

They rejected, of course, the one aberration of the US Bill of Rights the right to bear arms. Its other elements are: freedom of speech, assembly, religion, trial by jury, no deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

The Australian Founding Fathers smugly thought that there was no need to state the obvious in our Constitution. The common law respected all those things and it was unimaginable that the legislature would take them away. Ho-hum. By and large, the basic common-law freedoms have been upheld in Australia, especially compared with other countries, but there is always room for improvement. The important one is freedom of speech.
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Ron Bell acknowledges that good design results in easier sales, better value for buyers, and therefore more profit.

His company is developing the Belconnen Golf Club project. Like renewals and in-fill generally it has come in for flak over whether the ACT Government should be charging more betterment tax, but it has not drawn the community and neighbourhood fury that other developments have over design _ to the contrary.

The site is in the centre of the golf course and has approval for 340 blocks, though Bell has knocked that back to 318. He would prefer 318 blocks with good streetscape and vista than jamming on 340.
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A Canberra auctioneering company has debts of at least $1.1 million, mainly to the Federal and ACT Governments, according to the liquidator, Ray Dawson, of Ernst Young.

Mr Dawson was appointed official liquidator by the Federal Court last Friday. The company, Sale-O Pty Ltd, traded as Australian Capital Auctioneers, and had a large trade in selling government goods, especially cars, furniture and computer equipment.

Mr Dawson said a “”best estimate” presented to the court showed the company had assets of $40,000 and debts of $1.1 million after 2{ (two and a half) years trading.
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He came around the front of his desk for the interview, rather than talk across it. He has a fair amount of space at his offices in Mugga Way. He is the chief executive and national director (practice) of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. However, he is more interested in what you do with space than how much of it you have.

Australia, of course, has a lot of space. But as most of the population is packed into the south-east corner it is becoming more precious. The pressure is on for higher density living.

Peck sees a danger in this.
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It might sound like astral travelling, but when the members of the Republic Advisory Committee flew across the ACT border yesterday they entered a body politic under the Crown.

We know this because it says so in Section 7 of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act. For all intents and purposes that Act is the Constitution of the ACT. It is as important in the running of ACT affairs as the Federal Constitution is for the running of Federal matters.

The ACT’s Constitution could provide a very useful model for the committee as it looks for options for an Australian republic. The reason is that the ACT Constitution avoids nearly all of the ephemeral and uncertain elements that imbue the Federal Constitution.
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